Both outpatient and hospital physicians feel that mobile health devices such as personal digital assistants and Tablet PCs currently on the market do not meet their needs, according to a report by the Spyglass Consulting Group, eWeek reports. More than half the physicians surveyed said the PDA's small screen size and data entry methods restrict its use in clinical work, and most physicians surveyed cited problems with the size, weight and battery life of Tablet PCs, eWeek reports.
Although the PDA is the most popular device, more outpatient physicians use Tablet PCs, which have a keyboard and a larger screen. Twenty percent of outpatient physicians surveyed use Tablet PCs, more than four times the number of outpatient physicians who said they used Tablet PCs in a similar survey in 2003, eWeek reports. More than 75% of respondents said the Tablet PC is suitable for daily clinical use, compared with less than half of hospital physicians. Outpatient physicians are twice as likely to use a Tablet PC than hospital physicians, eWeek reports.
Most physicians surveyed said they use Tablet PCs for more complicated applications, and 98% said they used PDAs for simple tasks such as looking up usage or formulary information on drug reference databases or for calculating dosage programs. Forty-eight percent of respondents said they used PDAs for such tasks as managing patient data, eWeek reports.
Spyglass Director Gregg Malkary, who wrote the report, said the weight of Tablet PCs should drop to less than two pounds and the battery life should be longer, eWeek reports. However, Dr. Flash Gordon, a physician who was not surveyed but who has used both mobile devices, said the software for Tablet PCs also needs to improve.
The report was based on interviews with 102 physicians in 2004 (Baker, eWeek, 1/18).