14 DAY TRIAL // Physicians surveyed in the new Taking the Pulse U.S. v11.0 study from Manhattan Research have revealed a huge affinity towards Apple’s iPad and iPhone, the pharmaceutical and healthcare market research company said in a report.
This is just one of several recent studies from different firms focusing on physician adoption of Apple's iDevices, all of which ended with pretty much the same results - the number of 'iDoctors' is on the rise.
Some seventy-five percent of U.S. physicians own an Apple device, whether it be the iPhone, iPad or an iPod, Manhattan Research said.
According to the new Taking the Pulse study, this year’s digital adoption trends among physicians includes a focus on the iPad and other tablets.
They also tracked professional activities across multiple screens, electronic health records and online patient-physician communication.
Based on the results of the study, Manhattan Research concluded that a surge of adoption of Apple’s iPhone led to an indisputable dominance in the physician smartphone market in 2011.
The iPhone is now the number one smartphone platform used by physicians in the United States, their figures showed.
“Despite the success of the Android platform in the overall consumer market, physicians are flocking to the iPhone as their smartphone of choice,” said Meredith Ressi, president of Manhattan Research.
Manhattan Research analysts’ previous forecasts for smartphone penetration were exceeded to reach 81 percent this year.
Adoption of the iPad, one year after its debut, has reached 30 percent of U.S. physicians.
An additional 28 percent plan to get their own Apple tablet within the next six months, Manhattan Research said.
The timing couldn’t be better for the Cupertino-based gadgets vendor, which recently introduced the second-generation of iPads equipped with dual cameras, a faster processor, support for more types of apps, and the same 10-hour battery life.
“Physicians’ response to the iPad has been overwhelmingly positive, especially for use in the practice setting,” Ressi commented.
“Physicians also express strong interest in being able to access electronic medical records through the iPad – as more EMR providers offer this ability, iPad accessibility may be a deciding factor for some practices when selecting an EMR provider,” he added.
In order to determine physicians’ impressions of pharmaceutical sales reps and medical device reps using iPads during their in-office details, Manhattan Research is actively fielding a second study, which should be out in the following months, the company said.
Specifically, their ePharma Physician v11.0 and Digital MedTech Physician studies will be released in summer of 2011.