Department of Intensive Care Medicine, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany.
SMITH Consortium of the German Medical Informatics Initiative, Leipzig, Germany.
J Med Internet Res. 2020 Dec 21;22(12):e23955. doi: 10.2196/23955.
The use of mobile devices in hospital care constantly increases. However, smartphones and tablets have not yet widely become official working equipment in medical care. Meanwhile, the parallel use of private and official devices in hospitals is common. Medical staff use smartphones and tablets in a growing number of ways. This mixture of devices and how they can be used is a challenge to persons in charge of defining strategies and rules for the usage of mobile devices in hospital care.
Therefore, we aimed to examine the status quo of physicians' mobile device usage and concrete requirements and their future expectations of how mobile devices can be used.
We performed a web-based survey among physicians in 8 German university hospitals from June to October 2019. The online survey was forwarded by hospital management personnel to physicians from all departments involved in patient care at the local sites.
A total of 303 physicians from almost all medical fields and work experience levels completed the web-based survey. The majority regarded a tablet (211/303, 69.6%) and a smartphone (177/303, 58.4%) as the ideal devices for their operational area. In practice, physicians are still predominantly using desktop computers during their worktime (mean percentage of worktime spent on a desktop computer: 56.8%; smartphone: 12.8%; tablet: 3.6%). Today, physicians use mobile devices for basic tasks such as oral (171/303, 56.4%) and written (118/303, 38.9%) communication and to look up dosages, diagnoses, and guidelines (194/303, 64.0%). Respondents are also willing to use mobile devices for more advanced applications such as an early warning system (224/303, 73.9%) and mobile electronic health records (211/303, 69.6%). We found a significant association between the technical affinity and the preference of device in medical care (χs2=53.84, P<.001) showing that with increasing self-reported technical affinity, the preference for smartphones and tablets increases compared to desktop computers.
Physicians in German university hospitals have a high technical affinity and positive attitude toward the widespread implementation of mobile devices in clinical care. They are willing to use official mobile devices in clinical practice for basic and advanced mobile health uses. Thus, the reason for the low usage is not a lack of willingness of the potential users. Challenges that hinder the wider adoption of mobile devices might be regulatory, financial and organizational issues, and missing interoperability standards of clinical information systems, but also a shortage of areas of application in which workflows are adapted for (small) mobile devices.
移动设备在医院护理中的使用不断增加。然而，智能手机和平板电脑尚未在医疗保健中广泛成为官方工作设备。同时，医院中私人和官方设备的并行使用也很常见。医务人员越来越多地使用智能手机和平板电脑。这些设备的混合以及它们的使用方式对负责定义医院护理中移动设备使用策略和规则的人员构成了挑战。
因此，我们旨在检查医生移动设备使用的现状以及他们对移动设备使用的具体要求和未来期望。
我们于 2019 年 6 月至 10 月期间在 8 所德国大学医院对医生进行了一项基于网络的调查。医院管理人员将在线调查转发给当地参与患者护理的所有科室的医生。
共有来自几乎所有医学领域和工作经验水平的 303 名医生完成了基于网络的调查。大多数医生认为平板电脑（211/303，69.6%）和智能手机（177/303，58.4%）是其工作领域的理想设备。在实践中，医生在工作时间仍主要使用台式计算机（使用台式计算机的工作时间百分比平均值：56.8%；智能手机：12.8%；平板电脑：3.6%）。如今，医生将移动设备用于基本任务，例如口头（171/303，56.4%）和书面（118/303，38.9%）通信以及查找剂量、诊断和指南（194/303，64.0%）。受访者也愿意将移动设备用于更高级的应用，例如预警系统（224/303，73.9%）和移动电子健康记录（211/303，69.6%）。我们发现技术亲和力与医疗保健中设备偏好之间存在显著关联（χs2=53.84，P<.001），表明随着自我报告的技术亲和力的增加，对智能手机和平板电脑的偏好相对于台式计算机增加。
德国大学医院的医生对在临床护理中广泛实施移动设备具有很高的技术亲和力和积极态度。他们愿意在临床实践中使用官方移动设备进行基本和高级移动健康应用。因此，使用率低的原因不是潜在用户缺乏意愿。阻碍移动设备更广泛采用的挑战可能是监管、财务和组织问题，以及临床信息系统缺乏互操作性标准，以及工作流程适应（小型）移动设备的应用领域短缺。
