Epocrates iPhone Adoption Tops 75,000 U. S. Physicians
High demand continues among healthcare professionals for valuable patient safety tools
San Mateo, CA (PRWEB) April 6, 2009
In the nine months since the launch of Epocrates® software (http://www. epocrates. com/?CID=PRiPhone) for the iPhone platform, more than 10 percent of physicians in the United States are already actively using it to improve patient care.
"In less than a year, over 75,000 physicians have adopted Epocrates on their iPhone™ or iPod touch™. These physicians tell us every day how enthusiastic they are about the new content, graphics and features that we developed specifically for this new generation of smartphones," said Jeff Tangney, president and chief operating officer of Epocrates.
The Epocrates® Rx drug and formulary guide (http://www. epocrates. com/products/rx/?CID=PRiPhone) continues to rank as the #1 free medical application downloaded in the Apple App store. Physicians and other healthcare professionals primarily use the application to access critical drug information such as dosing, adverse reactions and interactions to ensure safe prescribing and treatment.
Building on its early success, the company launched the Epocrates® Essentials premium suite (http://www. epocrates. com/products/iphone. html) for the iPhone in January. This enhanced version includes an infectious disease guide with empiric and specific treatment recommendations, hundreds of laboratory tests, convenient medical calculators and tables, and information on alternative therapies such as Echinacea and St. John's Wort. It also features peer-reviewed disease content and evidence-based differential diagnosis developed in conjunction with the BMJ Group, publisher of the British Medical Journal.
"At one point the question was, 'will patients be comfortable with their doctor looking at a mobile device'? Now that iPhone has gone mainstream, patients are almost expecting their doctor to have access to the latest information technology to obtain clinical information at the point of care," said Mark Bard, president of healthcare market research company Manhattan Research (http://www. manhattanresearch. com).
Beyond high physician usage, the company has also seen an even greater number of other healthcare professionals adopting the iPhone device to access Epocrates' free or premium software. Patients may experience their physician assistant, dentist, nurse or pharmacist using it to check for drug interactions, health plan coverage or other decision support needs.
The company is continuing to develop for the iPhone platform with more graphic-rich content and additional feature enhancements. A clinical demo of Epocrates' newest version for the iPhone can be viewed on YouTube: www. youtube. com/user/epocratespr (http://www. youtube. com/user/epocratespr).
ABOUT EPOCRATES, INC.
Epocrates is a leading provider of clinical information and decision support tools to healthcare professionals. Epocrates currently has more than 600,000 active subscribers worldwide, including more than one in three U. S. physicians and more than one in three U. S. medical students. The company's subscription-based services enable healthcare professionals to make more informed medical decisions, reduce medical errors and practice more efficiently. For more information about Epocrates, please visit www. epocrates. com/company (http://www. epocrates. com/company).
All trademarks are properties of their respective owners.
CONTACT
Erica Sniad Morgenstern
Epocrates, Inc.
650-227-6907
Pr (at) epocrates (dot) com
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