9 Out Of 10 Doctors Prefer The iPhone

A recent study by Bulletin Heathcare of the reading habits of its 550,000+ subscribers found that the vast majority of healthcare professionals use iOS based devices to read Bulletin's daily email briefings. The data was collected over a nine month period from June 2010 to February 2011. Android came in a distant second, but did show signs of growth.

During the test period, the use of mobile devices shot up by 45%. The survey concluded that around 30% of healthcare professionals are using mobile devices to access content, while 70% are still using desktop computers. Of those using mobile devices, 90% were using a iPhone or iPad. Only 6% were using an Android device, and other platforms like RIM and Palm hardly registered.

"Despite Apple's longer tenure in the marketplace, we were surprised by the wide margin between Apple devices and others," said Bill Mulderry, president of Bulletin Healthcare. The interesting thing about this data is the different mobile use by medical specialty. "We assumed that specialty-based segments of the medical community might differ in their media habits and use mobile devices to varying degrees," Mike Donatello, vice president of research at Bulletin Healthcare parent company Bulletin News said. "Still, we were surprised to find a threefold range in mobile-device use, between emergency physicians and physician assistants on the high end, and clinical pathologists on the low end."

According to the data, 41% of physician assistants adn 40% of ER physicians are using mobile every day. By contrast, a mere 20% of oncologists and 16% of clinical pathologists are using mobile. Other specialist fields stay between 24% and 31%.

Of course, this is only data from one publication, but it is interesting enough to warrant more research, and delving into why iOS seems to be preferred by the healthcare sector. The trends shown by Bulletin's data do not reflect trends in the wider consumer market, where Android's share of the smartphone market has now surpassed Apple's.

[via Information Week]