Sean Coughlan, BBC News Education Correspondent, reports on the pioneering work of Professor David Cottrell, Dean of the University of Leeds medical school, who is “putting a whole suite of training tools and educational resources” into the palm of the hand of more than 500 medical students.

The University will be giving the phones to all clinical students in their 4th and 5th year as they spend considerable amounts of time away from the college campus working in various posts in hospitals and GP surgeries. The iPhones will be loaded with reference information to ensure they have instant access to “key medical text books”, note taking apps to help them document on the job experiences and a messaging portal to help them keep updated on course materials and in communication with their tutors.

The reference materials and prescription guideline resources are being supplied from mHealth company MedHand – whose service I profiled in my “mHealth Strategy” editorial for the Healthcare IT Manager publication.

The college claims the “iPhone package and connections will cost £380 per student” which is obviously a fraction of the £50,000 per year tuition costs for medical training. When it’s looked at like that you’ve got to wonder how long it’ll be before students are being given more optimised devices like the Samsung GTab!

I wouldn’t be surprised if competitive students help drive adoption here, after all if you’re at a medical college that doesn’t supply such resources you’ll probably be right to complain that these students are getting an unfair advantage!!