Mobile healthcare technology has become a staple in many hospitals and care facilities as devices, technologies, and applications help clinicians and patients improve care, engagement, and comfort. FierceMobileHealthcare’s new eBook Technology to Enable Care Transitions highlights three mHealth technologies that are enabling facilities to improve patient care.
1. Mobile-location based services
GPS and other mobile-location devices help care providers keep tabs on patients at every point of care, avoiding duplicate tests or sending someone to the wrong room. According to Ed Ricks, CIO of South Carolina’s Beaufort Memorial Hospital, monitoring patient flow using mobile-location based technologies will help improve the hospital’s efficiency and improve logistics for both staff and patients.
2. Mobile medical devices
Medical devices are becoming smaller and going wireless, allowing providers to bring care to patients in their home or community, rather than requiring patients to repeatedly return to clinical offices for tests. Steven Steinhubl, M.D., director of digital medicine at the Scripps Translational Science Institute and a clinical cardiologist at Scripps Health praised mHealth devices that patients can use at home to check their blood pressure and send the information to their care provider in real-time. “Do they really need to come in every three months just to see how they’re doing? Honestly, they may be feeling fine in three months but not feeling well at one month, but not bad enough to do a walk-in appointment.”
3. Patient portals on-the-go
Allowing patients access to their data through patient portals is improving patient engagement and care, as patients fill in gaps and find records in their health records that clinicians may have missed. David Levin, M.D., CMIO of the Cleveland Clinic Health System calls patient portals “a boon for patient safety.”
