Mobile Devices: A Day in the Life of the 21st Century Neuro-Ophthalmologist

When I was in medical school in 2002, I recall one of my attending physicians describing how the cellular telephone had revolutionized his on-call experience. Instead of taking his two golden retrievers on an aborted stroll because the pager rang out among the chirping birds, he could now answer the page while standing in the middle of the Chattahoochee River as his dogs played in the water. There is no doubt that this was revolutionary, and amazingly one which has come to be taken for granted, perhaps because it has become to be a burden of its own. Why? Probably because it seems that in the blink of an eye (even though it has been a decade) we not only have a phone, but an amazingly powerful computer, in our pocket. Indeed, a computer that is more powerful in many ways than the monster that occupied our offices. While nearly omnipresent connectivity to our work, friends, and family is one of the most powerful features of these devices, they can now be used increasingly to improve our work as physicians (Lor 2010) as will be discussed below.