Pub. 3 2019 Issue 1

Healt h care and Mobile Tech P hysicians are using mobile tech to boost productivity. As of November 2018, almost half of all medical profession- als relied on laptops, tablets, and smartphones to expand their abili- ty to work away from the office; on aver- age, they use four separate mobile ap- plications to help them. Physicians are adopting the use of mobile devices at a rapid pace, especially when it comes to accessing EHRs. At more than 60 percent, the percent- age is even higher in hospitals, even though some hospital organizations have banned the use of mobile tech. It’s a battle they are going to lose. Ac- cording to a survey that was published online by Physicians Practice magazine in 2018, 76 percent of those who were surveyed said they use mobile tech at least once a week. Some 90 percent of healthcare systems are working to transform their clinical practices by making big investments in mobile tech- nology. Nobody wants to miss out. How are medical professionals using tech in their practices? The 2018 Mobile Health Survey from Physicians Practice magazine provides some answers. • Nearly 70 percent of those who use mHealth are communicating with other staff members. • Some 51.1 percent of respondents say they are using themobile EHR app. • Approximately 50 percent use mobile tech to communicate with providers. • Some 46.6 percent of respond- ents are educating themselves about clinical issues. Physicians and other medical profes- sionals are especially quick to adopt anything that will help them reduce the number of communication errors and increase productivity. These are not surprising results. After all, why should physicians be any dif- ferent than anyone else when it comes to integrating technology into their lives? The surprise is that the technol- ogy is falling short of what physicians need. Health technology companies are listening and adapting their mobile solutions in a direct response to the feedback they are getting. What else might be a problem? Pa- tient privacy is one obvious answer. Too many physicians share patient data on servers that are not secure, or they use text messages to exchange private information. This provides an opportunity for hackers that will have to be addressed. It’s important for practices to determine reasonable protocols and expectations for those who use mobile devices. And what happens when a device is lost or sto- len? Maintaining security measures is harder when a medical professional does not have control of a particular device. These are all issues that are easier to deal with if the potential harms have already been minimized as much as possible. Some systems have already begun ad- dressing the problems. For example, ProHealth Care is a healthcare system being used in Waukesha, Wisconsin and the surrounding area. It offers an app that has the ability to keep voice and text communications secure. Physicians generally move around a great deal during the work week. What they want is information that can move with them, especially since they don’t tend to spend much of their time sit- ting at desks. The easier the access, the better they like it. Anything that is slow, hard to read, distracting, or diffi- cult to navigate is a problem. A simple interface that presents data clearly, and preferably in just one format, is a must. • Artificial intelligence is becoming more important to mobile soft- ware. The ideal is for the artifi- cial intelligence to select relevant data in a timely way and then pro- vide it to clinicians at exactly the right time. • Another significant improvement is creating mobile tech that doesn’t care what the origin is of the EHR. Providers want, and need, to be able to get patient information re- gardless of where it was entered. • Imaging technologies are making it possible to see real-time medi- cal imaging studies that are three dimensional. • Working in real time is also impor- tant when it comes to collaborat- ing with other medical profession- als. Being able to put notations on By TriTel Networks www.UtahAFP.org | 38