The tie that binds the information is the iPhone, the device that in the past few years has taken the mobile market by storm in consumer electronics as well as health care. Prateek Dwivedi, Mount Sinai's CIO, says when the hospital started laying the groundwork for VitalHub, most physicians with handheld were using Blackberrys, from Research in Motion. But the iPhone and the mobile platform built by Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple Inc. was just too good to pass up.
"The question we had to answer is what we were trying to do in terms of clinical access, and once we had that answer it was obvious the iPhone was the right device," Dwivedi says. "The touch interface, the small footprint, the development platform, the application platform ... it was easy to make the decision."
A lot of love
Dwivedi is not alone in his fondness for the iPhone device and the Apple platform. A 2009 survey conducted by research and analytics firm SDI found that 31 percent of 1,200 physicians surveyed owned an iPhone; another survey conducted by MobiHealthNews found that 87 percent of all mobile health applications on the market today can be found in Apple's AppStore.
Few would argue that the iPhone and its innovative features-the aforementioned ones plus the "squeeze" screen function and all-around intuitive design-has been a game changer in its three years on the market.
The iPhone right now is leading the pack, but it's not the only story in mobile health. Many view it as the tipping point for a period of hand-held innovation that will not be limited to a single device of platform. For example, Dwivedi lauds the iPhone, but also plans to build VitalHub applications for Blackberrys and the Android, a new hand-held player built on a platform from Google Inc., Mountain View, Calif.
"Our development efforts focused on building a mobile application that provided a 'natural' experience to a physician-that wouldn't require any training and would in a sense make the technology invisible to the user," he says. "We will take the same approach with Blackberry and Android versions. And we will write versions for them ... we have no intention of just porting the iPhone version into another platform. That's the big mistake people make with mobility-they don't take advantage of the different devices and platforms to make the user experience similar."
A new niche?
Smart phones for years have occupied an important niche in health care, but they mostly have been used for specific clinical tasks (e-prescribing, and accessing drug information and formularies) and general administrative ones such as calendar and appointment schedules.
Recent and rapid improvements in the smartphone market have increased demand from physicians for data access and functionality. And that demand is starting to be met with a supply of new mobile applications from third-party developers as well as hospital I.T. shops, notes Chris Wasden, managing director of the Health Industries Strategy Group at PricewaterhouseCoopers, New York.
A profound change in application development has taken place with the advent of Web services. The application programming interfaces and messaging standards enable discrete types of data to be pulled from information systems and provider to end users. Previously the model was to create large clinical repositories that aggregated data from myriad interfaced systems.
"A new dynamic is hospitals building their own applications for mobile devices, especially the iPhone, because they can do it quicker and for much less money than application development used to take," Wasden says.
Another factor fueling the rapid rise of mobile apps is economics. The majority of physicians already own a smart phone (The most recent mobile health survey by Manhattan Research found that 72 percent of U.S. physicians are using smart phones, up from 64 percent in a similar 2009 report. The research firm predicts that by 2012 more than 81 percent of physicians will be using smart phones.)
In addition, the infrastructure to support mobile health already is in place. Most hospitals already are running Wi-Fi networks, and physicians have access to 3G networks via their wireless plans.
So, with ever-improving functionality, stability and connectivity, what could slow down this mobile train? I.T. leaders say that application development on the provider side is still being approached with caution by many I.T. shops. And even the most enthusiastic proponents know there are limitations to the hand-held form factor and mobile platforms that may or may not be solvable.
Corey Asbell, chief medical information officer at Jefferson Healthcare, Port Townsend, Wash., is a big fan of mobility. He like many clinicians has used smart phones for years and has been witness to the increased power and intuitiveness of the devices.
Right now, he's one of a dozen or so clinicians at Jefferson Healthcare using the Allscripts Remote clinical application on an iPhone.
The application from Chicago-based Allscripts provides real-time patient summary information as well as task lists and daily schedules. The patient summary includes active medical problems, allergies, current medications and immunizations, social history and values from the most recent lab tests.
The software is designed to provide clinicians with the actionable data they need to make treatment decisions while on call, in a meeting or on the road. Asbell uses it to write prescriptions, take care of tasks like ordering drug refills and reviewing his schedule. The integration means that everything done via the iPhone is sent directly into the hospital's electronic health record.
But the application has yet to be rolled out to the rest of the clinical staff in part due to questions the I.T. staff has surrounding data security.
Be the first to comment on this post using the section below.