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.
During that same year, BlackBerry’s market share grew from 17.3% to 18.7%
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.
2 comments:
I read this article you just wrote from about 1 1/2 years ago, and I wanted to offer you a bit of an update while asking a question.
Doctors--especially surgeons--are heavily using smart phones (iPhone, Android, etc.), and they would like to use them to perform certain tasks quickly in the course of their rounding and other work to help them gather data necessary to ensure a smooth billing and collection process.
My brother, who is a new client of yours, has asked me to build an iPhone application that will help him, and optimally, we would like to integrate with your system to submit dictations, query about codes, and retrieve patient information.
Do we have to be an integration partner to do that, or is there some other way to leverage your web services, using only his login credentials to authenticate?
GQAdonis: AdvancedMD has a rich API that can be used for the kind of application that you are describing. The quickest way to get going would be to have your brother talk with his sales representative or a support tech about AdvancedMD Connect, which provides access to the API, as well as a rich library of sample code, a support forum, and telephone support.
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