Prevalence and patterns of mobile device usage among physicians in clinical practice: A systematic review.

Mobile devices and corresponding applications (apps) offer a unique potential for clinical work improvement. Healthcare employees already use them for a variety of clinical purposes. Even though their use might affect patients' health and data security, they have rarely found their way into organizational knowledge management strategies. We present the current state of research regarding the prevalence, patterns, and trends of smartphone and tablet usage among physicians in clinical practice. Five electronic databases were searched for quantitative studies. The extracted data were systematically analyzed and visualized in boxplots. The results show an increasing prevalence of smartphones and medical apps in clinical practice, especially among junior physicians. Current applications can be subdivided into four categories: Communication and Organization, Documentation and Monitoring, Diagnostic and Therapeutic Decision Support, and Education. Among them, there is a large number of applications with a direct impact on physicians' clinical actions and therefore on patients' health and data security. In consequence, healthcare organizations should systematically integrate mobile devices and apps into their knowledge management strategies, including a modern IT infrastructure and training courses. Further studies are necessary to identify organizational and external factors that support an efficient mobile device usage during clinical practice.

Smartphone Use and Security Challenges in Hospitals: A Survey among Resident Physicians in Germany.

Although mobile devices support physicians in a variety of ways in everyday clinical practice, the use of (personal) mobile devices poses potential risks for information security, data protection, and patient safety in hospitals. We used a cross-sectional survey-based study design to assess the current state of smartphone use among resident physicians in hospitals and to investigate the relationships between working conditions, current smartphone usage patterns, and security-related behavior. In total, data from 343 participating physicians could be analyzed. A large majority (98.3%) used their smartphones during clinical practice. Of the respondents who used a smartphone during clinical practice, only 4.5% were provided with a smartphone by their employer. Approximately three-quarters of the respondents who used their smartphones for professional communication never/almost never used dedicated GDPR-compliant messenger services. Using a hierarchical regression model, we found a significant effect of the organizational resources Social Support (Supervisor) and Information Security-related Communication on security-related behavior during the selection of medical apps (App Selection). Smartphones are an important part of digital support for physicians in everyday clinical practice. To minimize the risks of use, technical and organizational measures should be taken by the hospital management, resulting, for example, in a Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) initiative.