Epocrates’ fourth annual Future Physicians of America survey polled more than 1,000 medical students about their technology preferences and habits. Epocrates found that nearly 90 percent of medical students view information available through mobile or online drug and disease references, like Epocrates’ own offerings, as “highly credible.” Epocrates found that students are four times more likely to consult a mobile reference for a clinical question than ask their own attending physician. One of the more interesting charts from Epocrates survey breaks down the type of smartphones these medical students use:
Epocrates survey also found that nearly 60 percent of those medical studnets who did not have a smartphone planned on buying either an iPhone or an iPod Touch within the next year.
For more, check out Epocrates’ press release here.
September 4th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
After numerous attempts, I have been unable to dowu load Epocrates onto my new i phone. I get messages like your user name or pass word is invalid, or we could not down load because we could not acess a secure network. This is very frustating. Any suggestions.
September 8th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
[...] to the one the company conducted recently with medical students — revisit the results from that poll here. Here are the metrics that resulted from the most recent Epocrates [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Well, these results don’t surprise me. Here ePocrates is using a survey that includes only 1000 MEDICAL students that use their program. Where are medical schools at? In larger cities that apparently have access to AT&T wireless. If I were in a big city I might use an iPhone too, but I’m not. Many of the practitioners that use ePocrates are not in the big cities.
I have been using ePocrates for over 8 years now and have done well on my early Handspring and now my Palm TX. The iPod (AT&T) is not even available in my region. So if I WERE to go to a smart phone so to speak, I’d have to do Blackberry due to my carrier (Verizon or US Cellular). Hmmm. only 15% in this survey used a Blackberry, about the same as the Palm.
Well, I guess now that the iPhone is SOOOOO big, ePocrates has sent out emails to all of us faithful subscribers and users saying our platform is being phased out. Well, ePocrates, if you phase out the Palm and the Blackberry because your “1″ survey shows that the other platforms are not used enough, I guess that is your choice. Bad choice in my opinion, but I am only one voice. Guess I’ll have to go use somebody else’s program that chooses to support Palm products.
Hopefully, other users of the Palm and Blackberry will chime in here and say their piece. If enough of us do so, then maybe they won’t phase out the Palm or Blackberry.
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Dr. Duncan,
Are you still experiencing the invalid username message? An Epocrates support team member will be reaching out to you shortly. We also wanted to mention that support resources (such as live chat) are available at http://www.epocrates.com/support.
Best wishes,
The Epocrates Team
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Apologies Dr. Duncan, I meant to also ask that you send your username and contact information to support@epocrates.com and we will contact you directly.
Also, Mr. Chapman, first off, thank you for your continued support of Epocrates over the years. Please let us clarify that Epocrates is not ceasing support for all Palm devices, only a handful of older operating systems that do not have the memory or power to run future content and feature enhancements we have in the pipeline. Palm continues to be a prominent platform for us, and we will continue to support the majority of Palm OS devices as well as work to develop a native application for the Palm Pre. The email you received was meant to help subscribers on these older devices migrate to new platforms over the next 4-6 months. If you have any questions, please contact Epocrates support at support@epocrates.com, we’re here to help.