Is One Step Ahead
LEARN HOW mHEALTH TECHNOLOGY CAN FOSTER MEANINGFUL USE COMPLIANCE
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Tablet, laptop, and smartphone use are all a focus of
the hospital’s mobile program to support physicians and nurse practitioners in nursing homes and homeless shelters. While these facilities aren’t part of the hospital, it has deployed IT staff there to address problems such as wireless dead spots so healthcare providers working with patients on-site can still access the Hennepin County Medical Center EHR system. Healthcare providers say mHealth technology is beginning to enable meaningful use compliance in their workflows. Giving practitioners a look at patients’ records— especially for nursing-home visits—provides much more background on a patient’s case than ever before, Larsen said, and it lets them make more enlightened care decisions. Not only that, but there’s what he termed
“a huge amount of care coordination” back and forth between nursing homes and the hospital. Online access to the EHR gives practitioners at nursing homes full access to labs, care summaries and other vital data.
Power to the Patients Engaging patients—and giving them access to their
health data—is a major tenet of meaningful use. That’s why Hennepin County Medical Center is porting its patient portal to smartphones. This lets patients see data as well as interact in some ways, such as booking appointments, messaging providers, receiving notifications for preventive care visits due, accessing after-visit summaries, and viewing lab test results. “Many of these components are part of stage 1, and some
are part of stage 2,” Larsen said, adding that the features aren’t just available, they work. “I have a number of patients who are leveraging this quite effectively.” Park outlined the Navy’s use of mCare to message
sailors and Marines recovering at home from head trauma injuries. The system—which is compatible with most phones, smartphones or not, and uses a secure cell phone
connection—dispatches appointment reminders, health bulletins, and unit announcements (which apply to a group of recovering soldiers). The mCare program started as a mHealth technology
pilot and has expanded into its present research stage. “Having demonstrated the proof of concept, we’re now moving into a clinical outcomes study,” Park said. This will see whether mCare can actually help military members recover more quickly and completely from their injuries.
The Future’s So Bright Of course, mHealth technology remains in that mostly-
potential phase of adoption. Professionals believe such tools could enable meaningful use compliance in several areas, from computerized physician order entry (CPOE) to clinical decision support. That includes e-prescribing, Physician Interactive’s
Pingle later said. “One of the challenges to further adoption is that you’d think a majority of [prescriptions] would be done via mobile…but the vast majority that we see are written via desktop and the Web,” said Pingle, citing Allscripts research showing that 25% of prescriptions were filed electronically in 2010. Though low, this represents a “huge increase” over 2008 and 2009. Physicians love new technology, he said, but only when it works well. Vendors will have to overcome usability issues plaguing
many current applications. These include poor data-entry mechanisms and slow list-loading on mobile devices, he said. Once that happens, robust data systems such as e-prescribing can work well on smartphones.
CONNECTION
VOLUME 1 • ISSUE 4
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