Goodbye Pager.
Hello Smartphone.

Pagers have been a part of the quintessential physician uniform, along with a white lab coat and a stethoscope, for decades. But today, physicians who still use a pager may be in a minority among their colleagues in the United States.

Most physicians are trading in their pagers for smartphones. According to a recent Manhattan Research study, 72 percent of U.S. physicians use smartphones, and the research firm predicts that 81 percent of physicians will use a smartphone by 2012.¹

The appeal of smartphones is obvious: instead of juggling a pager, cell phone, computer, and desk reference, a physician can use a single smartphone to make calls, send and receive e-mail and text messages, monitor a patient’s heart rate or glucose levels, view x-rays and MRI scans, look up drug interactions, share electronic health records, and even stream music from the Internet during surgery.

“Physicians have always been advanced in terms of their mobile use,” said Monique Levy, Senior Director of Research at Manhattan Research, in a company release. “Nevertheless, growth in smartphone ownership in the last year is remarkable. Mobile is delivering on its promise to allow doctors to be ‘always on’ — which is partly why so many doctors say the Internet is essential to their practice.”

Dr. Ron Hellstern, an emergency-medicine physician who lives in Dallas, uses his iPhone 3GS extensively. While no longer in clinical practice, Dr. Hellstern uses his iPhone for his medical-practice management consulting business. “With clients all over the United States, including two in Alaska, I travel quite a bit, so I use apps like Safari, TripCase, Flight Map, Maps, and GPS Drive in my travels,” Dr. Hellstern says. “And, of course, being able to check and respond to e-mail on the road is essential.”

Smartphones in Medical School

Younger physicians don’t have to be convinced that smartphones are a critical part of their profession. In fact, 30 percent of medical schools now require students to have a smartphone.² So young physicians leave medical school having already incorporated smartphones into their everyday professional life.

The School of Medicine at Georgetown University recently started requiring students to have a smartphone after their first year. Students use the devices to look up information during clinical rotations, study medical vocabulary, and take quizzes.³

Other medical schools that require smartphones include:

• University of Massachusetts Medical School
• University of California, Los Angeles
• University of Virginia
• University of North Carolina
• Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University

Currently, the only medical school in Texas that requires its students to have a smartphone is the University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC). Jack Bullion, Instruction Librarian at UNTHSC who teaches a class titled “Medical Informatics” for all first-year medical students, believes smartphones are the future of medicine. “They alleviate the burdens on students and physicians,” he says. “Instead of having to carry around several references, everything is housed in one device. It’s like carrying around an entire medical library.”

Bullion teaches the students the basics of using a smartphone, covers the most-used medical apps, and instructs them on how to use critical thinking to look up targeted information. “Students may not realize at first how important their smartphone is, but when they start their rotations, it becomes a lifeline.”

Privacy and Other Concerns

While it seems to be an essential tool for physicians, the smartphone does present a few downsides. Security and privacy issues seem to be the biggest worry. Deborah Peel, founder of Patient Privacy Rights, says, “The problems are common to all mobile devices: encryption at rest on the device and in transit, and whether data on lost or stolen devices can be easily accessed.”⁴

Letting the mobile device get in between the physician and his or her patients is another concern. If physicians spend too much of an office visit looking down at a screen for formulas or research, the doctor-patient relationship may be compromised.

Some physicians may be wary of giving up their pager just yet because of spotty cellular coverage in hospital settings. In addition, pagers tend to be more reliable and cheaper to use than smartphones.

BlackBerry or iPhone?

Currently, BlackBerry and Apple are nearly neck and neck in terms of physician smartphone adoption, but BlackBerry is still the top smartphone brand among physicians.¹

However, Apple seems to be attempting to get more medical professionals to use their platforms and software. Apple has started conducting workshops for medical professionals on how the iPhone and iPad can be useful in their medical practices. Apple even has a web page dedicated to showing how their various devices can be used in health care.

Jack Bullion from UNTHSC estimates 90% of his students use an iPhone. And he also believes Apple’s iPad has some exciting medical possibilities as well. “The iPad still fits in a physician’s white coat pocket, and it can store way more information than an iPhone,” he says.

Whichever device wins out, one thing is for sure: smartphones — and other mobile devices like iPads — are here to stay, and they’re changing how physicians practice medicine in exciting and innovative ways.

¹72 percent of physicians use smartphones, by Brian Dolan, May 5, 2010, http://mobihealthnews.com/7505/72-percent-of-us-physicians-use-smartphones/.

²Trends in Mobile Medicine: Smartphone Apps for Physicians, FirstWord Dossier, http://www.firstwordplus.com/FWD0430510.do.

³New Tool in the MD’s Bag: A Smartphone, by Sindya N. Bhanoo, May 19, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/18/AR2009051802234.html.

⁴Smartphones increase trust among doctors; privacy concerns for patients, by Brian Dolan, November 3, 2009, http://mobihealthnews.com/5273/smartphones-increase-trust-among-doctors-privacy-concerns-for-patients/.

Smartphone Applications for Physicians

The number of applications available for physicians differs from device to device. If you don’t already have a smartphone, be sure to check out the available apps for each type before you decide which one to purchase.

Here are a few apps you may find helpful:

• Epocrates (available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm, and Droid) – A free drug reference. Users may upgrade to the Essential Deluxe app ($199 for a one-year subscription), to access a comprehensive coding reference and an extensive medical dictionary.
• MedCalc (available for iPhone and Windows Mobile) – A free medical calculator that gives you easy access to a wide array of medical formulas, scores, and classifications.
• Modality (available for iPhone) – A collection of apps ideal for medical students, including Moore’s Clinical Anatomy flash cards, Mosby’s Review Questions, Netter’s flash cards, and more.
• Eponyms (available for iPhone, Palm, and BlackBerry) – A searchable source of more than 1,700 medical eponyms.
• Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary (available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm, and Windows Mobile) – Includes over 60,000 entries, 1,000 illustrations, and 30,000 integrated audio pronunciations.
• OsiriX (available for iPhone) – Allows you to view images produced by medical equipment (MRI, CT, PET, PET-CT, etc.) and confocal microscopy.
• The Blausen Human Atlas (available for iPhone) – Provides point-of-care access to 3D animations (approximately one to two minutes in length) of common medical treatments and conditions, with accompanying narration.
• iMurmur (available for iPhone) – Helps you recognize and diagnose heart murmurs by presenting heart sounds in a quiz format. Organized to emphasize sounds physicians are likely to encounter most frequently.
• AirStrip OB (available for iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile) – Allows obstetricians to securely log on to a hospital’s labor and delivery unit and view nursing notes, vital signs, and labor status, as well as physical-exam and maternal/fetal-waveform data.

Help Your Employees and Patients Stay Healthy — and Help Lower Health Care Costs

If you own a medical practice and provide health insurance for your employees, you are well aware of your financial incentive to help your employees stay healthy. Unhealthy employees mean higher insurance premiums.

And a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study uncovers the high price our economy pays for our tobacco problem. The study estimates that the failure to cut down on smoking takes an estimated $180 billion toll each year on the economy.¹

Now, Texas Coalition for Worksite Wellness, in partnership with The Texas Association of Business and the Academy of Family Physicians, is working to provide smoking-cessation toolkits to employers and physicians.

The employer toolkits include information on the business case for investing in smoking cessation, as well as details about how you can incorporate smoking cessation into your health care insurance benefits. The physician toolkit provides resources that help doctors to motivate their patients to quit smoking, and resources to improve a smoker’s chances of quitting and staying smoke free.

To find out more, e-mail info@txworks.itewellness.com or go to www.txworksitewellness.org/articles/22.

¹Dallas Business Journal, TAB: Here’s how to lower health care costs, by Kerry Panchuk, May 13, 2010, http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2010/05/10/daily42.html.

Traveling This Summer?
Get Extra Peace of Mind.

Vacations can be expensive, so it makes sense to protect your investment. Extra insurance like travel insurance and medical-evacuation coverage can help you to enjoy peace of mind while you travel.

Here are two types of coverage that can help you when a vacation takes a turn for the worse:

Travel Guard insurance provides coverage for expenses you may incur when your trip gets cancelled, delayed, or doesn’t go as planned. Depending on the level of coverage you purchase, you may be covered for things like:

• Covered medical expenses for a medical emergency while you’re on your trip
• Reimbursement if your trip is cancelled, even if it's due to a work-related reason or a job loss
• The expense of replacing damaged baggage and lost travel documents
• Hotel and food expenses if your return flight is delayed

In addition, every plan includes 24-hour travel assistance for things like travel advice, help with a lost or stolen passport, assistance if you need to re-book a flight or hotel, and help with rental car reservations.

To learn more, go to http://www.tmait.org/InsuranceProducts/Ancillary/TravelGuard/.

MedjetAssist pays for medical evacuations in the case of a medical emergency. Policy holders who become ill or injured while traveling 150 or more miles from home get direct access to a medically dedicated long-range aircraft that transports them from a domestic or foreign location to a hospital of their choice. Other benefits include:

• No deductible
• No copayments
• No claim forms or waiting period
• An unlimited number of covered trips
• No monetary maximum to the benefit schedule

To learn more, go to http://www.tmait.org/InsuranceProducts/Ancillary/MedjetAssist/.