Pitfalls with Smartphones in Medicine

The purpose of this review is to describe ten potential pitfalls for practicing clinicians who use smartphones during active patient care (Textbox). These devices are an integral element of modern medical care and will certainly endure for the years ahead; hence, a listing of latent caveats does not nullify their many advantages toward efficient medical care. An awareness of specific pitfalls might help clinicians harness more of the benefits and avoid some of the problems. This list may also help guide future engineering research that seeks to mitigate problems with current smartphones. The toughest problems to solve are the ones you don’t know you have and the ones that your predecessors never encountered.