Just what the Dr. ordered

By John Cox, NetworkWorld.com, 01/12/04

One of the hot areas for mobile computing and WLANs is healthcare, but even here, deployments remain pretty basic.

That's one result from a 2003 study by Spyglass Consulting, Menlo Park, Calif. Author, Managing Director,and Founder Gregg Malkary says he was surprised that so many of the mobile healthcare applications were stand-alone. An abstract of the full report, which is available for purchase, is here.

"I found only about 5% of the institutions had more comprehensive mobile applications, tied into backend systems," he says. These comprehensive apps include things like charge capture, patient data management and "e-prescribing" -- prescribing drugs electronically.

WLANs and mobile applications lend themselves well to fast implementations. Malkary says that many clinicians on the front-line of patient care are becoming technology activists. "They're forming a grass roots movement demanding better clinical IT," he says. "They've [often] gone out and bought hardware and software themselves. But the next set of solutions can't be done by purchasing stuff at Best Buy: it requires the support of the hospital."

Some 92% of the 100 respondents in the Spyglass survey said they were using legacy systems that rely on paper-based processes and workflows. This technological time-warp is running up against some formidable pressures for change: industry and government mandates to improve patient safety, and more recently, patient privacy.

Malkary cites the 1999 Institute of Medicine report, "To Err is Human," which, among other things, found that medical errors caused 1.3 million injuries per year in hospitals, and 98,000 deaths. Partly as a result, the Business Roundtable formed The Leapfrog Group, to unite big companies and healthcare providers in improving safety. Increasingly, safety recommendations are making use of digital technology to improve accuracy in medical reporting and drug prescribing, and to push critical or the most current data out to doctors and nurses at patient bedsides.

Malkary says a range of institutions are now trialing e-prescription applications, expanding their use of bar coding at almost every stage of a patient's hospital stay, and, for improving revenue, electronic charge capture software.

Almost all of these applications realize their full benefit by using handheld or mobile devices and, often, a wireless connection. "With charge capture, you can record procedures and diagnoses at the point of care, rather than writing them down manually, or trying to remember them later, and rekeying them into a [billing] system 5-7 days after the fact," Malkary says.

To facilitate access to backend data and multiple applications, Malkary says, a growing number of hospitals are creating Web-based portals for clinicians armed with wireless handheld computers.

What's your experience with mobile and wireless computing in healthcare? Are the improvements measurable? Do doctors and medical staff embrace or resist mobile devices? Let me know at jcox@nww.com.

Back to Wireless Notes

Comments

John Cox and Gregg Malkary are right on!
Mobile medicine through WLANs in hospitals are taking off. For information on how some hospitals
secure and manage their Wi-Fi and more comments from Gregg Malkary visit:
http://www.bluesocket.com/news/prItem.csp?id=167

Posted by: Patrick Rafter on February 25, 2004 03:31 PM

Post a comment

Name:


E-mail address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember info?