Study shows doctors use PDAs more for admin than care

Doctors in the US are not generally making use of PDAs to improve patient care, and those that do use handheld devices tend to stick to administrative rather than clinical tasks, according to a new survey.

Forrester Research and the American Medical Association interviewed 1,331 medics and found that although 57% owned PDAs — more than five times that of the rest of the population — only 6% regularly used them to access patient records, and 5% to check laboratory results.

The researchers argued that a large part of this result was down to partly down to the usability and specifications of the PDAs they use, but also partly down to non-intuitive EMR software: "Hardware improvements in battery life, screen resolution, and connectivity won’t be enough to convince handheld-enabled physicians to view their devices as critical clinical tools — especially if they must wrestle with clunky EMR applications that make data input and extraction a complex, time-consuming process of clicking through multiple screens."

The most common clinical use for PDAs was as a research tool; two in three of those who owned PDAs used them to checked medication data, and 28% of those surveyed accessed clinical database content. This is compared to 87% of users using their handheld devices as address books and 80% as calendar and appointment reminders.

When asked whether they used PDAs to enter and chart patient details onto their electronic patient record system, 16% of doctors said that they did. 72% said that their current medical establishment did not own an electronic system that would connect with their PDA.

The most enthusiastic users of PDAs in their profession were family and general practitioners (71%) and younger, resident (student) doctors (73%). Fewer doctors over the age of 40 (45%) tended to use PDAs, and female clinicians were slightly less likely than their male counterparts to use them regularly.

The study also noted that most physicians wrote out their prescriptions manually, rather than use. Nevertheless, 60% of medics at the establishments surveyed which had e-prescribing facilities told researchers that they used their PDAs to write and sign prescriptions.

Use of PDAs tended to be more common at larger institutions or practices, with 63% of the physicians surveyed who work there saying they used handhelds at work.