OBJECTIVES: Mobile applications allow communications and access of information processing even at the patient’s bedside. We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of smart phone based applications in improving academic performance and clinical practice among all healthcare professionals.

METHODS: PubMed/MEDLINE, and the Cochrane Library were searched to identify the literature. Reference list of included studies and Clinicaltrials.gov were also searched for relevant studies. Any interventional or observational studies which assess the improvement in knowledge or skills of any healthcare professionals such as doctors, nurses and pharmacists including the students published in English were included in our review. Two authors were independently involved in study selection and data extraction of the studies and disagreements were resolved by discussion or by consulting a third reviewer.

RESULTS: A total of 37 out of 2262 non-duplicate studies were considered for the review. Seventeen among 22 studies (18 on doctors and 4 on nurses) on knowledge summarised a significant improvement among the participants following the use of mobile apps, however 4 studies reported that the difference was not significant. Five studies on doctors evident for the significant skill improvement, whereas 2 studies which are on both nurses and doctors reported a non-significant effect of mobile apps on skill development. Eight studies assessed both knowledge and skill among the participants which revealed that skill and knowledge were significantly improved after the introduction of mobile application, even though two studies didn’t support the skill domain.

CONCLUSIONS: Overall, our finding demonstrated a significant improvement in skill and knowledge among the health care professionals following the use of a mobile phone applications.