Smartphones Fill Med School Prescription
Smartphone Fill Med School Prescription
By: Mitch Wagner, Information Week
October 5, 2009
At the University of Louisville School of Medicine, doctors' scribbled prescription pads have been replaced with Epocrates and other smartphone software. Integrating smartphones into the students learning experience makes them more productive, gives them more face time with patients -- and saves wear and tear on lab coats.
The Louisville School of Medicine deploys mobile medical apps to its 600 medical students. Students use the tools for classroom study and and clinical work, giving them instant acccess to information, said Dr. Pradip Patel, associate vice-chair for medical education at the school.
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"They can look up things on-the-fly, if they are in a patient room and don't want to go into their office or go online," he said. "They can do it at the point of access, as opposed to going out or going home and reading a book off-hours."The mobile apps also reduce the number of books students have to carry around. "If you ever go to a medical campus and you see the residents walking around in their white lab coats, you see the pockets are all ripping away because they have this reference text in one pocket, and that reference text in another," Patel said. Mobile apps combine all the reference texts into a single device, along with PDA, pager, and cell phone -- with Web access, too, to get the latest, up-to-date medical information. For example, students can use their smartphones to look up H1N1 updates on the CDC Web site, for example.