Personal mobile devices are becoming a fixture in health care as 85 percent of hospital IT departments surveyed allow doctors and staff to use personal devices at work, according to a new survey of health care IT professionals by Aruba Networks, a manufacturer of mobile networking infrastructure.
Aruba announced the results of its bring-your-own-device (BYOD) survey on Feb. 21 at the HIMSS12 health care IT conference in Las Vegas. The company interviewed 130 IT professionals working for its health care customers.
"Based on our conversations, they are feeling the pressure from the physicians and staff to support those devices," Manish Rai, Aruba’s head of industry solutions, told CIO Insight sister publication eWEEK.
The survey showed that 83 percent of health care IT professionals polled allow iPads on their enterprise networks and 65 percent support iPhones and iPod Touch devices.
Meanwhile, 52 percent of hospitals support personal BlackBerry devices, which is a surprising data point, said Rai, who noted that other industries are not enabling access to personal BlackBerry devices as much as the health care industry is.
As for Android, 46 percent of the IT professionals surveyed allow enterprise use of the Google OS on personal phones or tablets.
The report also revealed that 58 percent of respondents are using virtualization technology to access applications on iPads, but only 8 percent of those surveyed provide complete access to their hospital network on personal mobile devices. In addition, only 24 percent of those interviewed by Aruba provide at least limited access to hospital applications.
To read the original eWeek article, click here: BYOD Wins Over 85 Percent of Health Care IT Pros: Aruba
