Medical students’ attitudes and wishes towards extending an educational general practice app to be suitable for practice: A cross-sectional survey from Leipzig, Germany

AbstractBackground: In medical education and practice, smartphone apps are increasingly becoming popular. In general practice, apps could play an important future role in supporting medical education and practice.Objectives: To explore medical students’ perceptions regarding the potential of a general practice app for training and subsequent work as a physician.Methods: Cross-sectional survey among Leipzig fourth-year medical students who were provided with an app prototype for a mandatory general practice course.Results: Response rate was 99.3% (n = 305/307); 59.0% were female and mean age was 24.5 years. Students certified that the app had a higher potential than textbooks in both education (57.4% vs. 18.0%) and practice (47.1% vs. 22.8%). Students’ most desired possible app extensions when anticipating its use for subsequent work as a physician were looking up information for diagnostics, therapy and prediction (85.1%), access to electronic patient files (48.1%), communication and networking (44.3%), o...