64% of Doctors in the US have Smartphones

64% of Doctors in the US have Smartphones: A Beachhead for Pharma Mobile Applications

Oren Salomon

This article points out some very useful statistics and trends, namely that 64% of doctors in the US use smartphones. Compared with the 27% adoption rate of the general population, doctors are early adopters. This makes sense – HCPs were some of the first adopters of mobile technology like pagers. They are the quintessential mobile professionals.

Popular uses of smartphones for doctors have been searchable digital versions of medical reference books, which often number in the thousands of pages. Dosage calculators are also popular. Though the smartphone can perform many tasks of a desktop, it is available wherever busy doctors go, while desktops stay in the office. The only limiting factor of a smartphone for doctors seems to be screen size. Within a few years, it is conceivable that doctors will manage their practices primarily through their smartphones rather than their computers.

Today, national initiatives are pushing for implementing digital healthcare services. If patient info and the like becomes available through secure online resources, then the smartphone becomes an attractive platform for health applications because of its mobile convenience. The appeal of bringing health applications to the “point of care” explains why the smartphone has been the most quickly adopted technology ever by doctors.

This all means that mobile applications can be a beachhead for pharma marketers. As doctors become more accustomed to downloading mobile applications to their smartphones, the opportunities to get a larger share of the doctors’ time increase. This is because doctors’ while constantly busy, will find themselves idle with nothing to do at various times of the day, perhaps on a train or the 2 minutes between appointments with a moment to spare. Though your sales rep could never reach them at this moment, the doctor might choose to open up the mobile application on their smartphone and learn a little more about your product offering.