Physician interaction through smart phone based platform- A new mode of physician peer group connection

Introduction:

       Smart phone has been more and more popular, especially among physicians. The application of smart phone is multidimensional. It includes not only voice communication between 2 persons as the classical telephone, but also can serve as a mobile platform for multimedia communication among group of persons. The purpose of this study was therefore to evaluate the application of smart phone for intra-physician group communication.

Materials and Methods:

       The study include 103 physicians in a greater city-county region. All the physicians have a smart-mobile phone. A specific mobile phone communication platform group was created through an App. Within this smart phone communication group physicians can liberally communicate each other through text messages, voice phones, sticker figures, shared internet connection or videos……et al.

Results:

       Through a 6 month period, the physician communication community included 103 physicians. Their practice locations ranged from 11 in medical centers, 9 in regional hospitals and 83 in private practice. The pattern of application of smart phone communication were: 1820 communications, including 14.7% specific comments, 7.3% photos, 11.8% short-videos sending and sharing like old style movie watching, 5.9% notice posting including academic events, 17.6% social events or other specific news within the peer group, 4.4% web news sharing , 35.3% cartoon stickers and 3.0% others.

Discussion:

              In the era of mobile device, smart phone is the most convenient modality. A variety of communication modes can be employed through smart phone. In particular, we have found that intra-group peer communication is a popular, convenient mode of application taking the advantage of multi-media nature of smart phone communication for dedicated intra-group use. It provides a platform of reception of multi-media communication with peer group. The creation of a specific physician group would facilitated the mutual connection within the group and may promote physicians both professional and non-professional development.