Hospitals mandating use of smartphones for affiliated doctors

From American Medical News:

63% of physicians already own smartphones and many have discovered that they can be a valuable work tool. Now some hospitals are buying smartphones for affiliated doctors and mandating use.

Henry Ford Medical Group in Detroit purchased BlackBerry phones for all 1,204 of its physicians. The BlackBerry has become a "tremendously popular time-saver, for example, physicians can give patients their direct cell phone numbers rather than the number to an answering service."

While Henry Ford's physicians have the ability to access patient records via their BlackBerry phones, few do because of the limitations of the small screen. Every physician has the drug reference application Epocrates.

References:
Smartphone use pushed by hospitals.American Medical News, 2009.
Image source: BlackBerry 7250. Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License.