According to a survey conducted by MDsearch, 53 percent of physicians who responded to the survey said that they own a smartphone, and of that group 63 percent use mobile medical applications. Curiously though, MDSearch did not explain how many physicians actually took part in the survey or other details -- so take the numbers as light reading or simply fodder for future research.

As might be expected, the survey found that drug reference apps like Epocrates were among the most popular apps along with medical calculators, clinical resource apps, CME apps, medical dictionary apps, and apps for patient scheduling. Surprising, MDSearch found that some physicians are using mobile applications for accessing EHRs and e-prescribing. Here are a number of other metrics from the survey:

20 percent of the physicians with smartphones "frequently consult" the device during patient visits.
37 percent of physicians with smartphones "occasionally consult" their smartphones while with patients.
Twice as many physician respondents use iPhones than use Blackberry devices.
38 percent of physician respondents still use a pager
34 percent still use a PDA (less popular than a pager -- not surprising)
7 percent own a Kindle, Amazon's e-book reader.

MDSearch pointed out that, interestingly, the percentage of physician respondents who said they use smartphones (53 percent of respondents) also said they use EHRs (53 percent of respondents).

Check out the MDSearch site for more