Center for Public Health, Department of Environmental Health, Medical University of Vienna, Kinderspitalgasse 15, 1090, Vienna, Austria.
BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2019 Apr 24;19(1):88. doi: 10.1186/s12911-019-0811-2.
As part of the mobile revolution, smartphone-based applications (apps) have become almost indispensable in today's information society. Consequently, the use of medical apps among healthcare professionals has increased heavily over the past years. As little is known on medical app use in day-to-day clinical practice in Austria, the present study aims at closing this knowledge gap by assessing respective prevalence, readiness, and concerns among Austrian practitioners.
We conducted a cross-sectional online survey among a sample of 151 Austrian doctors (mean age 45.0, SD 12.0, 55.0% females). We developed a German study questionnaire on the basis of the Practitioner Telehealth Readiness Assessment Tool (PRAT) to assess medical app use-related readiness and attitudes, and validated it using principal component analysis.
In our study, 74% of participants used medical apps on a daily basis, with clarity, ease of use, speed, and support in clinical routine mentioned as most important app features. However, the majority of participants perceived certain barriers to use medical apps. Younger participants used more medical apps, were more likely to use them during work, and yielded higher readiness scores. The most often used medical apps were Diagnosia and Embryotox (both 28.5%).
Nowadays, medical apps serve as an important source of information for many doctors and are especially popular among younger physicians. The omnipresence of smartphones in the smocks of healthcare workers raised awareness for potential shortcomings regarding disruption of traditional face-to-face doctor-patient interaction among all healthcare stakeholders. This study's finding thus highlight the need for initiating a public discussion on legal and social frameworks to successfully integrate mobile apps into everyday clinical.
随着移动革命的一部分，基于智能手机的应用程序（apps）在当今信息社会中几乎已不可或缺。因此，医疗专业人员对医疗应用程序的使用在过去几年中大幅增加。由于奥地利在日常临床实践中对医疗应用程序的使用知之甚少，因此本研究旨在通过评估奥地利从业者的使用流行率、准备情况和关注问题来填补这一知识空白。
我们对 151 名奥地利医生（平均年龄 45.0，SD 12.0，55.0%为女性）进行了横断面在线调查。我们基于从业者远程医疗准备评估工具（PRAT）制定了德国研究问卷，以评估与医疗应用程序使用相关的准备情况和态度，并使用主成分分析对其进行验证。
在我们的研究中，74%的参与者每天使用医疗应用程序，清晰度、易用性、速度和对临床常规的支持被认为是最重要的应用程序功能。然而，大多数参与者认为使用医疗应用程序存在某些障碍。年轻的参与者使用更多的医疗应用程序，更有可能在工作中使用它们，并且准备程度得分更高。最常使用的医疗应用程序是 Diagnosia 和 Embryotox（均为 28.5%）。
如今，医疗应用程序已成为许多医生的重要信息来源，尤其受到年轻医生的欢迎。智能手机在医疗工作者白大褂中的无处不在提高了所有医疗利益相关者对传统医患面对面互动中断的潜在缺陷的认识。因此，这项研究的发现强调了需要启动关于法律和社会框架的公开讨论，以便成功地将移动应用程序整合到日常临床实践中。
