Top News

Samsung Boosts Entertainment Options with Blockbuster Deal

T-Mobile Releases Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G

U.K. Serves Legal Papers on Facebook, Spurs Privacy Concerns

For Gen Y, Smartphones Are Necessities

Hackers Eyeing U.S. Power Grid, NSA Warns

More News >

Many nursing schools, such as the Regis College School of Nursing in Weston, Mass., now require students to use smartphones or tablet computers in the classroom, teaching future nurses how to find and process reliable medical information, instead of making them commit vast amounts of data to memory.

Nursing educators say it's not that their students need to know less, but that the amount of essential data has exploded, according to The New York Times.

Joann Eland, an associate professor at University of Iowa's nursing school, reports there are too many drugs, interactions, and tests to memorize, driving an increase in smartphone and tablet adoptions among nursing programs and professional nurses.

Nurses, once called upon to memorize lists of drug side effects and interactions, treatment protocols, and medical tests, can now turn to mobile devices for the information they need, often right at a patient's bedside. The incorporation of technology highlights the potential of mobile devices to improve the effectiveness of patient care.

Five years ago, according to the New York Times, most American hospitals didn't have electronic patient records or Internet connections. Now, most hospitals give nurses computer access, not just at the nurses' station, but in patient rooms and treatment areas. This trend puts critical information at nurses' fingertips so they do not need to leave a patient's side to look it up, and also reduces the risk of errors that could result from busy nurses relying on their memories for information.

Major hospitals are embracing nursing's new mobile connection, taking gadgets' role beyond mobile medical encyclopedias to include them in the fabric of day-to-day workflow. Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass. is rolling out the Voalte communications system to nurses this year, which uses voice calls, alarms and texts to help nurses stay in touch and prioritize patients and duties.

Nurses may soon get critical national alerts on their mobile devices as well, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rolls out its planned mobile alerts app that will send out vital drug reaction information in the midst of public health crises, such as the H1N1 flu pandemic.

As devices grow more prevalent in the nursing profession, nurses will also demand a wide variety of apps and services to run on them. Mobile versions of everything a modern nurse needs, from drug databases to patient charts, and treatment protocols to nursing textbooks, will be in high demand, providing an emerging market for developers.

Tablets and smartphones are taking their place at patient bedsides, opening a new world of up-to-the-minute information access for healthcare workers on the front lines of patient care.