Healthcare and the Smartphone

Smartphones are widely heralded as games-changers especially for healthcare practitioners. As we have previously noted, there are several medical smartphone advantages, and smartphones are now the most preferred type of mobile device for healthcare professionals. However, this does not necessarily mean that out of every five U.S. residents, only one smartphone is currently running the latest model. This gap in technological readiness between healthcare practitioners and their patients needs to be bridged, to ensure that best practices are being followed at all times. To that end, a look at some of the disadvantages of using smartphones for healthcare purposes should be to shed light on how this particular advantage can be utilized.

First things first: are there any bad effects of smartphones? There are no official bad effects of smartphones per se, but there is a potential bad effect of using a smartphone for your health: if you are already habituated to reading text messages on your cell phone, then you are more likely to pick up the habit when on the go. The use of smartphones is similar to picking up a newspaper at the corner newsstand: you pick one up, read what it has to say, and either close the page or bookmark it for later reference. But in doing so, you are effectively replacing one form of social interaction with another (texting) - and possibly, one of the primary uses of smartphones has been replaced by that of reading.

But it is not just the lack of real-time communication that could lead to bad implications for healthcare workers. One of the main advantages of smartphones is that they carry with them much more data than the average mobile device. Health care providers are already forced to work within a strict budget framework; this constraint could force them to reduce the scope of services that they offer or to reduce the number of appointments that they make. In order to minimize spending, healthcare professionals might consider reducing the number of tests that they require or even prescribing less tests altogether. A reduction in the number of tests that are completed means a reduction in personnel hours required.

This works against one of the main advantages of smartphones - the reduction in cost of using mobile devices. Smartphones are an extremely cheap device. It costs less to buy one and it does not require you to set up a separate bank account just to own one. They are also very easy to get hold of and access: all you need is a smartphone with internet and you can log onto the internet any time of the day or night. You will find that most hospitals now have smartphone apps which allow patients to record their medication and schedule their appointments directly from their smartphone; this enables hospital staff to spend their time on ensuring that patients get the care that they require in the shortest time possible.

But what about those who are looking to use their smartphones as part of their healthcare service? Are there apps that cater for this need? And if there are, how do you choose between these apps? The fact is that the vast majority of smartphone apps are designed by third parties, and that means that it is not easy to determine which ones are the best. This can make choosing the right smartphone app quite difficult, but here are some pointers that can help you make your choice:

First things first, smartphone apps can have a few disadvantages depending on the user. If the app uses the camera too much, then the phone will be unable to take photos in all situations. For example, if you are taking pictures of your children at a birthday party, then the disadvantage could be that you cannot take the photos if there is any low light present, or the subject is in the foreground. Similarly, if the app requires you to input information into the forms, then the disadvantage could be that you cannot enter accurate data unless the phone has an accurate internal memory. This type of disadvantage is rarer, as smartphones have excellent memory space and it is very unlikely that you will encounter such a problem. But the disadvantage of smartphones is often overshadowed by the superiority of the other advantages of owning one.

Secondly, it is important to realize that the disadvantages of smartphones do outweigh the advantages, as many people use these devices every day. The popularity of smartphones is not likely to wane in the foreseeable future, meaning that you will need to be ready to accept the disadvantages if you want to use them on a daily basis. But the advantages of owning a smart phone far outweigh the disadvantages of using them every day.

Finally, if you want to use your smartphone in the healthcare industry, then you should be prepared for both the advantages and disadvantages. Smartphones are capable of providing a wealth of information to doctors, but they are also prone to crashing and losing information, which can create a problem. In addition, the healthcare industry is notorious for spending a large amount of money on paper documents that doctors need to refer to, which can make using smartphones inconvenient. These issues are likely to become more important as health care practices move to digital formats.