A new survey published by Knowledge Networks for the pharmaceutical industry, found that 64 percent of doctors have a smartphone, while 27 percent of primary care providers and specialists say they have a tablet. The survey polled more than 5,400 doctors.
Manhattan Research surveys have found that about 72 percent of physicians in the US as of mid-2010 have a smartphone or PDA, which is fairly close to the figure from this most recent survey. In an email to MobiHealthNews, Manhattan President Meredith Ressi noted that one reason the research company continues to lump smartphone and PDA together for the survey question is that some doctors don’t know the difference.
“It’s a funny quirk of physicians that we found as smartphones came on the market,” Ressi wrote. “We’d ask if they have a smartphone and they’d say ‘no’, but then say that they do have a PDA, which was often actually a smartphone when we asked the types of devices.”
Ressi said one physician in his 60s made a similar comment to her recently when he said he did not use a smartphone but did have a PDA, which he pulled out of his pocket and turned out to be a relatively new smartphone: a Palm Pre.
Knowledge Networks’ figure for the adoption of tablets among physicians is also in line with other estimates: Chilmark Research said that 22 percent of physicians had an iPad at the end of 2010. Rumor has it that the iPad is dominating as the tablet of choice for physicians, the Knowledge Networks figure of 27 percent adoption of (all types of) tablets among US physicians. Assuming both figures are more or less correct: That leaves a small percentage for other types of tablets beside the iPad.
The KN survey also backed up well known stats around app adoption with medical reference apps commanding a majority of physicians as adopters and other apps mostly finding single digit adoption rates.
More from the press release below: Keep reading>>
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