Majority of Doctors Use Tablets for Professional Purposes

by Jaime Brewster

More than half of surveyed doctors (51%) use tablet devices for professional purposes, according to current wave data from the Sources & Interactions Study, March 2014: Medical/Surgical Edition. This represents a 4% increase year-over-year. However, the percent of doctors using these devices for work has remained steady over the last six months.

The study also found that 50% of doctors say they use a tablet for personal and professional purposes, 18% use it for personal reasons only and 2% use it only for professional purposes. Slightly less than half (46%) of physicians use both a smartphone and a tablet for professional purposes, while 32% use a smartphone only for work reasons and 5% use a tablet only.

Full-year data shows that 28% of physicians use their tablets to read articles from medical publications and 30% use the devices to research general medical issues or specific clinical situations. The study also found that 24% of doctors get professional news updates from tablets and 24% use these devices to reference drug data.

The Sources & Interactions™ Study is a detailed examination of doctors’ online and mobile activities, e-detailing experience, and exposure to (and evaluation of) information sources including traditional and emerging media, pharma reps, CME, convention and more. The study is conducted every six months and targets more than 3,000 physicians annually across 22 specialties, exploring their media preferences and habits. Sources & Interactions was designed to help marketers and their agencies cost-effectively allocate resources to their overall promotional mix, and provide publishers with specific insight about where their offerings fit into physicians (and other healthcare professionals’) information inventory.

To find out more about the study and specialty-specific data, let us know.