Photo by Daniel Sone
A new survey suggests that doctors and nurses in London are routinely using their own smartphones for patient care.
Investigators say the current lack of data encryption on these devices could result in the inadvertent disclosure of “highly sensitive and confidential data” in the absence of an active organizational strategy on digital security.
The team raised this issue and reported results of the survey in BMJ Innovations.
Mohammad H. Mobasheri, MBBS, of Imperial College London in the UK, and his colleagues wanted to determine how healthcare professionals are using digital technology on the frontline.
So the investigators invited more than 6000 clinical staff at 5 London hospitals of varying sizes to complete a questionnaire on ownership and use of portable devices and mobile health apps in the workplace.
The results are based on the responses of 287 doctors and 564 nurses from different specialties.
About 99% of doctors said they owned a smartphone, and 73.5% owned a tablet. The equivalent figures for nurses were 95.1% and 64.7%, respectively.
When asked about the usefulness of smartphones for carrying out clinical duties, 92.6% of doctors and 53.2% of nurses said these devices were “very useful” or “useful.”
Most doctors (93.8%) used their smartphone while at work to communicate with their colleagues, compared with 28.5% of nurses. About half of the doctors (50.2%) used their smartphone instead of a traditional bleep (page).
About 78% of doctors and 34.8% of nurses said they had downloaded a medical app to their device, with 89.6% of doctors and 67.1% of nurses saying they used these apps as part of their clinical work.
Of those who owned a medical app and used it at work, 41.3% of doctors reported using such an app weekly, and 33% said they used one daily. The equivalent figures for nurses were 42% and 22.3%, respectively.
The apps included drug formularies, medical calculators, and those for disease diagnosis and treatment, reference and education, documentation and drug preparation.
When asked if they had ever sent patient data over their smartphones using SMS, app-based messaging (such as WhatsApp), and picture messaging using their smartphone camera, many respondents said they had done so.
About 65% of doctors had used SMS, 33.1% had used app-based messaging, and 46% had used their phone’s camera and picture messaging to send a photo of a wound or X-ray to a colleague. The corresponding figures for nurses were much lower—13.8%, 5.7%, and 7.4%, respectively.
About 28% of doctors and 3.6% of nurses said they still retained clinical information on their smartphones.
A substantial proportion of respondents said they wanted to be able to use their own devices at work. About 72% of doctors and 37.2% of nurses wanted a secure means of sending patient data to colleagues using their own smartphone.
Fully secure messaging services for smartphones are not yet available in the UK, and the data are unlikely to be encrypted, according to investigators. They therefore urged National Health Service organizations to make sure their staff understands the potential risks of sharing patient information via their unsecured smartphones.
The team said the results of this survey provide strong evidence that healthcare organizations need to develop policies to support the safe and secure use of digital technologies in the workplace.
