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. 2019 Apr 24;19(1):88.
doi: 10.1186/s12911-019-0811-2.

Are Austrian practitioners ready to use medical apps? Results of a validation study

Fanni Hofer  1 , Daniela Haluza  2
Affiliations

Are Austrian practitioners ready to use medical apps? Results of a validation study

Fanni Hofer et al. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. .

Abstract

Background: As part of the mobile revolution, smartphone-based applications (apps) have become almost indispensable in today's information society. Consequently, the use of medical apps among healthcare professionals has increased heavily over the past years. As little is known on medical app use in day-to-day clinical practice in Austria, the present study aims at closing this knowledge gap by assessing respective prevalence, readiness, and concerns among Austrian practitioners.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional online survey among a sample of 151 Austrian doctors (mean age 45.0, SD 12.0, 55.0% females). We developed a German study questionnaire on the basis of the Practitioner Telehealth Readiness Assessment Tool (PRAT) to assess medical app use-related readiness and attitudes, and validated it using principal component analysis.

Results: In our study, 74% of participants used medical apps on a daily basis, with clarity, ease of use, speed, and support in clinical routine mentioned as most important app features. However, the majority of participants perceived certain barriers to use medical apps. Younger participants used more medical apps, were more likely to use them during work, and yielded higher readiness scores. The most often used medical apps were Diagnosia and Embryotox (both 28.5%).

Conclusions: Nowadays, medical apps serve as an important source of information for many doctors and are especially popular among younger physicians. The omnipresence of smartphones in the smocks of healthcare workers raised awareness for potential shortcomings regarding disruption of traditional face-to-face doctor-patient interaction among all healthcare stakeholders. This study's finding thus highlight the need for initiating a public discussion on legal and social frameworks to successfully integrate mobile apps into everyday clinical.

Keywords: Health communication; Healthcare personnel; Medical technologies; Principal components analysis; Telemedicine; mHealth.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

This survey was approved by the ethics committee of the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, (matriculation number no. 1633977) on 21 December 2017 and conducted following the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki. Participation was anonymous and voluntary, thus study subjects gave their implicit consent when starting the online survey.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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