Reimagining Electronic Clinical Communication in the Post-Pager, Smartphone Era.

Communication is the lifeblood of clinical medicine, yet most health care practitioners still use pagers, communication tools developed a half-century ago. Recently, there is increased interest in shifting to smartphone-based communication modalities. Many clinicians use short message service texts directly from their cell phones,1 often in innovative ways,2 and others have supported using secure text messaging applications to avoid violations to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.3,4