If You're Reading This On A Mobile Device, You're Probably Using A Tablet
By Katie Wike, contributing writer
Studies find physicians prefer tablets when reading medical publications, smartphones for most everything else
According to Epocrates, “Digital omnivores are becoming the standard: connected, mobile-centric clinicians who show preference for mobile screens in all professional tasks and spend more time accessing digital information than their colleagues.”
Kantar Media Healthcare parsed that topic a little further in its study Sources & Interactions Study, September 2013: Medical/Surgical Edition, finding there are certain tasks physicians want to utilize tablets for, and others they prefer to perform on smartphones. For instance, the study of more than 3,000 physicians found when it came to tablet usage:
- 51 percent use a tablet device for professional purposes
- 49 percent use a tablet for personal and professional purposes
- 19 percent use a tablet for personal purposes only
- 2 percent use a tablet for professional purposes only
When it came to specifically reading journal publications on mobile devices:
- 28 percent use tablets to read articles from medical publications
- 21 percent use a smartphone to read articles from medical publications
- 16 percent use their tablets to access medically oriented webcasts/podcasts
- 12 percent use a smartphone to access medically oriented webcasts/podcasts
MobiHealthNews writes of physician’s journal preferences, “Kantar found that doctors are still more likely to use a smartphone than a tablet for professional tasks, including researching specific clinical situations and getting professional news updates. That’s still much lower than the 74 percent that use a desktop or laptop computer or the 55 percent still reading paper journals.”
App usage among physicians, according to the survey through MobiHealthNews, found a significantly different list for smartphones than for tablets. “For smartphone apps, 56 percent of doctors used diagnostic or clinical reference tools, 51 percent used drug coding or reference apps, 37 percent used medical journal, magazine, or newspaper apps, and 31 percent used workflow tools. In terms of tablet apps, though, 37 percent used medical journal, newspaper, or magazine apps, 30 percent of doctors used diagnostic or clinical reference apps, 27 percent used electronic medical record apps and 22 percent of used drug and coding reference apps. Accessing the Internet and checking email, however, were still the top use cases for both tablets and smartphones.”
CDW published an infographic which points out of the 152 healthcare providers surveyed, 84 percent said mHealth devices like tablets make multitasking easier. “Physicians who are equipped with the pocket-sized devices spend just over two hours a day working on the touch screen computers, which amounts to 26 percent of their total computing time,” reported EHR Intelligence, “They gain 1.1 hours in daily productivity.”
Interestingly, while this Kantar survey found 28 percent of doctors use tablets to read journals, another Kantar survey found 89 percent of doctors still read the print version of journals.
“Over the last several years, print has remained the most effective method for reaching doctors through medical journals, going against the widespread notion that print is on its way out," said Dave Emery, General Manager of Healthcare Research at Kantar Media. "At the same time, the fact that younger physicians and key opinion leaders are more likely to access articles digitally demonstrates a critical shift that publishers and advertisers need to know as they strive to reach the next generation of doctors."
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