Awareness of academic use of smartphones and medical apps among medical students in a private medical college?

Objective: to assess the awareness of medical apps and academic use of smartphones among medical students. methods: the questionnaire-based descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in january 2015 and comprised medical students of the rawal institute of health sciences,islamabad,pakistan. the self-designed questionnaire was reviewed by a panel of expert for content reliability and validity. questionnaires were distributed in the classrooms and were filled by the students anonymously. spss 16 was used for statistical analysis. results: among the 569 medical students in the study,545 (95.8%) had smartphones and 24(4.2%) were using simple cell phones. overall,226(41.46%) of the smart phone users were using some medical apps. besides,137(24.08%) were aware of the medical apps but were not using them. also,391(71.7%) students were not using any type of medical text ebooks through their phone,and only 154(28.3%) had relevant text ebooks in their phones. conclusions: medical college students were using smartphones mostly as a means of telecommunication rather than a gadget for improving medical knowledge. © 2016,pakistan medical association. all rights reserved.