Future Mobile Device Usage, Requirements, and Expectations of Physicians in German University Hospitals: Web-Based Survey (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND The use of mobile devices in hospital care constantly increases. However, smartphones and tablet PCs have widely not yet become official working equipment in medical care. Meanwhile, the parallel use of private and official devices in hospitals is common. A growing number of mobile applications for smartphones and tablet PCs are available for medical staff. This mixture of devices and applications challenges persons in charge to define 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, their concrete requirements and future expectations on mobile devices and mobile applications in German hospitals. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the current usage, the functional requirements and the expectations of prospective applications on mobile devices in a hospital setting among physicians of university hospitals in Germany. METHODS We performed a 24-question web-based survey among physicians in eight German university hospitals from June to October 2019. The online survey was forwarded by responsible persons to physicians from all departments involved in patient care at the local sites. RESULTS A total of 303 physicians from almost all medical fields and work experience levels completed the web-based survey. The majority regarded a tablet PC (211/303, 69.6%) and a smartphone (177/303, 58.4%) as the ideal device for their operational area. In practice, physicians are still predominantly using desktop PCs during their worktime (desktop PC: 56.8%; smartphone: 12.8%; tablet PC: 3.6%). Today, physicians are using mobile devices for basic tasks like 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 more advanced applications like an early warning system (224/303, 73.9%) and as a mobile electronic health record (EHR; 211/303, 69.6%). We found a significant association between the technical affinity and the preference of device in medical care (X_S^2=53.84,P<.001) showing that with increasing self-reported technical affinity the preference for smartphones and tablet PCs increases compared to desktop PCs. CONCLUSIONS Physicians in German university hospitals have a high technical affinity and positive attitude towards 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 (mHealth) applications. Thus, the reason for the low usage of official mobile devices with supporting applications is not the 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 the lack of applications whose workflows are adapted for (small) mobile devices.