Good Article re: Docs & PDA Usage

Last month Forrester Research released the findings from its latest survey. Some of the interesting information that stands out includes:

• U.S. physicians are five times as likely as general consumers to use handheld computers, but less than a third of physicians who have mobile electronic medical records actually use them.
• Medical residents formed the group most fond of their PDAs, with 73 percent reporting that they use a handheld computer or PDA regularly.
• Keeping track of contacts and appointments were by far the top uses of the handheld devices. However, 65 percent of physicians using PDAs did use the device to check medications. Between 5 percent and 7 percent used the handhelds to order medications, check lab results or access patient records.

• Fifty-seven percent of surveyed doctors reported using some sort of handheld computer, such as a PDA or tablet PC. Doctors were less likely to use such devices if they were women (53 percent of the female physicians used them), older (45 percent of physicians older than 40 used them), surgeons (54 percent used them compared with 71 percent of general-practice physicians), or employed at small practices (39 percent of physicians at solo practices used them, compared with 63 percent of physicians at large practices).

See the entire piece at eWeek: Doctors Using Handhelds, But Not for Medicine