Many doctors share her skepticism of smartphones in medicine. I recently mentioned the device to a pediatrician. As part of the exhibit, the team used CellScope, a mobile phone attachment to show attendees a picture-perfect magnification of their inner ear canal - much clearer than I’d seen with my otoscope. A medical technology blog that I write for had organized an exhibit called “The Smartphone Physical” to showcase smartphone apps - many of them already commercially available - that doctors could use in a physical. I remembered Tim’s eardrum when reading the 2013 program of TEDMED, an annual conference in Washington showcasing the most promising medical advances in the country. My attending later confessed that after 10 years of practicing, she still sometimes had trouble seeing the eardrum. Tim had been subjected to enough agony, and we sent him home with a course of antibiotics for a presumed ear infection. I finally gave up and admitted that I couldn’t find the eardrum. The more I maneuvered the otoscope, the more Tim yelped in pain. Unfortunately, it was difficult to see the characteristic cone-shaped membrane. As part of the routine physical exam, I used my otoscope - a device first described in 1363 - to examine Tim’s eardrum. We proceeded to examine the patient, a young boy named Tim, who had an earache. If my attending had caught me, I would have received a stern lecture about how cellphones were not to be used while patients were in the room. There was a strict “no cellphone” policy in the pediatric clinic where I was working as a third-year medical student. As my attending physician walked in with the next patient, I quickly stuffed my iPhone into my pocket.

Smartphone cardiograph