Introduction:Medical knowledge is rapidly expanding and updating. It is very important that students can timely access to information and the latest scientific evidence without any time and place limitation. The smartphone is one of ICT tools that adopted greatly by healthcare professionals. Today, the most medical sciences universities have provided smartphone as an educational aid tool and acquisition licenses for medical apps resources in training of their students.Aim:This research was conducted to determine common smartphone applications among medical students of Urmia University of medical sciences and to identify barriers in using them.Materials and Methods:This research was a descriptive type of study carried out in 2016. Population of the study included 530 medical students completing the clinical course in Urmia University of Medical Sciences. Data were collected using researcher-developed questionnaire. The validity of it determined based on the view of experts and the reliability of it obtained by calculating the value of Cronbach’s alpha (α = 0.82).Results:82.3% of the students had smartphone, which in terms of operating system the highest was related Andriod (53%) and iPhone (32%). The most common applications used often by medical students included Up to date, PubSearch, Calculate by QxMD, Epocrates and OMnio. Lack of accreditation of medical apps by valid health institutions (4.63), lack of support and update of applications by their developers (4.44), lack of adequate skill to use applications (4.25) are the most important barriers in using these applications among students.Conclusion:To assurance quality of medical apps, it seems very important that academic and healthcare organizations should be involved to develop and update the apps and also provided guidelines for accreditation of apps. It is recommended that for promotion of knowledge and skill of students provide essential educations.

Background: Assessment of hospital information system (HIS) service quality helps to meet the needs of users and a strategy to expand the interaction between HIS developers and the users. SERVQUAL is an extensively used technique to measure the service quality of information systems.

Introduction:Telepathology is a subdiscipline of telemedicine. It has opened new horizons to pathology, especially to the field of organizing consultations. This study aims to determine the capabilities and equipment required for the implementation of telepathology from the viewpoints of managers, IT professionals, and pathologists of the hospitals of West Azerbaijan, Iran.Methods:This is a descriptive-analytical study conducted as a cross-sectional study in 2015. All public and private hospitals of West Azerbaijan were selected as the study sites. The population of the study was the managers, directors, pathologists, and IT professionals of the hospitals. The study population was considered as the study sample. Data were collected using questionnaires. The validity and reliability of the questionnaires were assessed, and data were analyzed using SPSS (Statistical Product and Services Solutions, version 16.0, SPSS Inc, Chicago, IL, USA).Results:The mean awareness of the study population of telepathology in the studied hospitals was 2.43 with a standard deviation of 0.89. According to analysis results (F = 7.211 and P = 0.001), in the studied hospitals, the mean awareness of pathologists, managers, directors, and IT professionals’ of telepathology is significant. In addition, the mean awareness of pathologists is higher than that of managers, directors, and IT professionals, and this relation is significant (P = 0.001). According to IT professionals, among the influential dimensions of the implementation of telepathology in the studied hospitals, the effect of all dimensions, except hardware capabilities, was above moderate level.Conclusion:According to our findings, stakeholders believe that the implementation of telepathology promotes the quality of health-care services and caring patients on the one hand and decreases health-care costs on the other hand. Therefore, it crucial and important to consider users’ viewpoints into the process of implementing such systems as they play a vital role in the success or failure, and the accurate estimation of required sources, of the systems.