Do you think doctors use iPhones?

AdvancedMD dipped our toes in the mobile device world clear back in 2002, when we released our Handheld Charge Slips application, which runs on Windows Mobile PDA devices. It’s actually a pretty slick little app, but it hasn’t seen much adoption—perhaps because not many doctors use Windows Mobile PDAs.

So, what are doctors using? Well, I can’t find any stats on the subject, but it’s probably safe to say that doctors are as likely to gravitate towards whatever is “coolest” as anyone else, so I’ve been looking at general smartphone market share.

Worldwide, Symbian continues to dominate the landscape…but, according to Gartner, Apple iPhone market share grew from 2.8% in Q2 2008 to 13.3% a year later!

During that same year, BlackBerry’s market share grew from 17.3% to 18.7%

Perhaps more significant is a report from AdMob that indicates that the iPhone accounts for 52% of all mobile web site traffic in North America. So…people who browse the mobile web via smartphones (and, perhaps, those most likely to utilize a smartphone to perform clinical tasks) use the iPhone more to do that than all other phones combined. Geesh.

Oh, and that new upstart OS, Android? It already accounts for 13% of all mobile web traffic. That’s over twice the traffic generated by Windows Mobile OS. And AT&T doesn’t even have an Android phone yet.

To be fair, Microsoft knows they’re way behind the curve in this area, and that Windows Mobile 6.5 is only a (weak) temporary stopgap measure until they can get WM 7.0 ready to release. But they have a lot of ground to make up.

It’s also interesting to note that Epic and Apple are working together to get doctors at Stanford Hospital and Clinics, in Palo Alto, California, to start using their iPhones to access patients’ charts. That’s going to take some arm twisting!

Check out this article in the Washington Post for more examples of how doctors are using smartphones (especially iPhones and BlackBerrys).

For the foreseeable future, it looks like the iPhone is the smartphone to watch, with BlackBerry and Android fighting for second place.

Happy Anniversary to Me: 10 Years as Microsoft Certified Partner

On October 1, 1999, I took (and passed) Exam 176: Designing and Implementing Desktop Applications with Microsoft® Visual Basic 6.0, thereby officially becoming an MCP (Microsoft Certified Partner).

Years earlier, I had made a conscious decision to ride Microsoft’s coattails, having developed a fondness for Visual Basic as a quick and dirty development tool. Fortunately, I never had to build a Windows application using MFC or ATL, since my career has focused on middle tier and database code, with a few opportunities to play with .NET (C#) WinForm apps and VB6 ActiveX controls.

This certainly wasn’t the only road to follow, and I wouldn’t even say it was definitively “the best” choice. Many developers have built successful careers around Java, the “LAMP stack”, etc. But it’s worked out well for me.

In a few months (January 25, to be exact), I’ll celebrate my 10th anniversary of passing the last of four exams required to achieve Microsoft Certified Solution Developer certification.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge in those 10 years, and a lot of code (good, bad, and ugly) has fallen out of my head. Not a bad way to spend ten years.