Awareness and using of medical students about mobile health technology in clinical areas

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Necessity of data transmission and getting contact with specialists is so evident in impassable regions. In order to solve such problems, there are different solutions one of which is mobile health technology. Being small and user-friendly, easy to enter data and having low expense are some of its advantages. This study aims to define the association between awareness of medical students in clinical stage about mobile health technology application and the rate of their using this technology in educational hospital of Isfahan in 2011.

The study is a cross-sectional analytical application research. Sixty medical students were selected as samples from a society of 240 medical students. A researcher-made questionnaire was used. The questionnaire included 21 multiple choice and 15 yes no questions, which were corrected to reach a score. A researcher-made checklist with 5-fold Likert scale was used to define the rate of applying such technology. The reliability of questionnaire was confirmed through a test-retest. The collected data were analyzed with the help of SPSS software in descriptive and deductive statistics level.

The highest percentage of awareness about mobile health technology among medical students in the clinical stage of Azzahra educational hospital is 45.6 in nature areas, and their lowest percentage of awareness is 17.8 in the infrastructure area. In addition, their mean awareness of all areas is 54.4. The highest percentage of using mobile health technology by medical students is 14.6 in the education area, and their lowest percentage of usage is 6.8 in the treatment area. Their mean usage of all areas is 9.4 as well.

The rate of awareness and application of mobile health technology is not favorable. Except for treatment, there is no significant association between the rate of awareness and application of mobile health technology.