According to a recent profile on Apple's corporate site, Doylestown Hospital, located outside of Philadelphia, PA, recently outfitted its 360 independent physicians and hospital staff with 3G iPhones in an effort to help them save time, be more productive and provide better care for their patients.

"Physicians need something that is a beeper and cell phone, and that allows them to get messages and information about patients," Doylestown's Dr. Scott Levy (pictured), Vice President and Chief Medical Officer told Apple.

"iPhone offers a major workflow improvement for our physicians," said Rick Lang, Doylestown's Vice President and Chief Information Officer. "iPhone is so intuitive that we have never trained doctors how to get information," Lang says.

Doylestown physicians have synched up their iPhones to the hospital's Microsoft Exchange ActiveSynch for email, calendar and contacts and leverage the mobile email app to receive time-sensitive hospital-wide email alerts.

The iPhones also synch up to Doylestown's EMR system MEDITECH Client/Server 6.0. As long as the doctors have secure access to a Safari browser on iPhone, they can access patient information from anywhere in the world, Levy told Apple. The mobile EMR allows doctors to check on patients' vital signs, medications, lab results, allergies, nurses' notes, therapy results, and even information about patient diet. 

Another favorite category of app on the iPhone among the Doylestown doctors are medical reference applications, like Epocrates Essentials, which helps to explain diseases, interpret lab results, and provide drug information.

For more, check out Apple's site and be sure to listen in on the narrated slideshow.