In this study, the author and creator of “PICU Calculator” for iPhone details the superiority of a medical student with a smartphone over an attending using the pharmacy reference book. A few entertaining tidbits from their main results:
– Medical students don’t know how a book functions – failed to correctly complete any pediatric dosing task using the British National Formulary for Children.
– Residents and attendings managed to make the book work for them about half the time.
– Overall across all levels of training, 35 for 35 in correct dosage and volume using the iPhone app – with a mean time savings of over 5 minutes.
So, when the author of an iPhone app choses a clinical task his app is designed to replace, it works great! But, the larger point – as we already knew – there is a role for well-designed point-of-care electronic tools, so we shouldn’t give up on our CPOE and EHR kludge so soon.
“Students prescribing emergency drug infusions utilising smartphones outperform consultants using BNFCs.”
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21787737