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Doctors and Med Students Embrace Smartphones

by Kaiser Hwang on May 21, 2009 at 06:02 AM

Even though smartphones have been around for years, the exploding application scene (started by Apple's App Store) has transformed what was typically a business communication device into much, much more. Despite the surge in mobile entertainment apps, it's not all games: According to the Washington Post, roughly 64-percent of doctors in the U.S. use a smartphone, and many are using devices like the iPhone to look up drug interactions, view X-rays, and even stream music during a surgery.

Med school students are also getting in on the action, with Georgetown's medical school requiring students to own either an iPhone or iPod Touch (sound familiar?). Similarly, Ohio State University has promised to give each and every one of its 1,400 students an iPod Touch by this Fall. Catherine Lucey, Vice Dean for Education at OSU told the Washington Post, "It allows the residents and the students to ask questions at the bedside, and not rely on memory and not guess. They can actually sit with the patient if they wish and use a number of online sources."

There's pretty much an infinite number of uses a device like the iPhone could offer the medical field. With over 25 pages of medical-related apps on the App Store alone -- and the ability to link specialized hardware to the yet-to-be-released iPhone 3.0 -- you have to wonder if Apple had this planned all along. [From: The Washington Post]

Tags: education, iphone, ipod touch, IpodTouch, medical, medicine, smartphone, students, top

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