Spok Mobile

Overall this application is one of the worst two-way messaging apps I have used. Though it does integrate with our system’s existing paging network and messages do seem to be delivered (bare minimum functionality), the UI is terrible. I have it two stars because 1 is the lowest and it does actually send and receive messages, so it should get some minimal credit. Very clunky to navigate between message “threads”. group message threading is essentially absent. Message history seems to disappear very quickly. No search function. Multimedia support is very bare bones. Certain characters are not supported “/“ and no error message is supplied! Our hospital system pays money for this. We have to use it to communicate. It should be less terrible, and allow us to quickly and easily navigate what are often many and complex messages. Paging is no longer just send a number to get called back. Modern two way asynchronous messaging should be much better than this.

On ios, the paging system is frustrating. I will keep receiving reminder notifications until I “confirm” receipt. But there’s no way to do that for a message unless I force close the app and reopen it. As long as the app is open and you’re looking at the message, there’s no way to confirm that you’ve read it.

We switched from physical pagers to Spok when I started residency in 2017. Fast forward to now, this app has remained essentially unchanged, getting updates to make sure it remains functional with iOS updates, but nothing more. It feels like an app that was designed before the original iPhone even came out. It is clunky, has a terrible UI, and seems to function worse now than when I first had to use it (e.g., you are supposed to be able to tap phone numbers within a page to easily call, but this either doesn’t work now or you have to tap multiple times for the call prompt to come up). It’s just an embarrassment and they likely have no real incentive to improve it because huge healthcare systems often don’t want to switch to a new system.