Smartphone use on rise in hospitals

More than half of US hospitals use smartphones or tablets and around 69 percent clinicians use both a desktop or a laptop and a smartphone or tablet to access data, a study says.

The results come from the 2014 Mobile Devices Study by health care research firm HIMSS Analytics.

On an average, 169 smartphones and 37 tablets are in use per hospital.

"It is one thing to state that mobile technology is cool and it is another to determine what value it brings to the health care equation," David Collins from HIMSS North America said in a statement.

Over two thirds of the people polled used apps to access clinical information but less than half of them believed they could access most or all needed clinical systems technologies using these devices.

One third of the respondents also believed that smartphones and tablets will drive overall efficiency in patient care by eliminating redundancies.

"Clinicians reported smartphones/tablet computers greatly enhance their ability to communicate with other clinicians and healthcare providers," said the study authors.