Spent the morning earlier this week at the Mobile Health Expo held at New York’s Javits Center which only confirmed one of my long held feelings about Healthcare IT and mobile health solutions specifically: frustration. The healthcare sector continues to be one of the most fickle adopters of IT solutions in general and mobile solutions more specifically and ranks well behind other service industries in terms of IT budgets as a percentage of operating expenses. However, at the same time, it represents the sector that perhaps the most to gain from the adoption of mobile solutions.
While there are no shortage of pilots, initiatives and proposed standards there is still very little to show for when it comes to actual deployments and investment. It is easy to point out what some of the issues or adoption barrier to mobile health solutions specifically – from interoperability issues with stove-piped legacy/proprietary systems and limited commitment and follow-through towards mobile capabilities from major HIS vendors to the obvious security concerns and the lack of agreement of what constitutes (EHR) meaningful use.
Nevertheless, the immense potential of and need for mobile health solutions remains. Moreover, federal money – by way of the ARRA – is beginning to make its way into the system. VDC has long stated in its research that 2011 would be a turning point in this sector due – in part – to impact of the ARRA on HER penetration (which is a precursor to many mobile health solutions). Could it just be that this process (in this case EHR adoption) needs more time. EHR adoption – and achieving meaningful use – is complex, especially for the many organizations that lack the appropriate infrastructure, redundancy plan and security capabilities.
There is (still) much to be excited about when it comes to mobile health opportunities. Healthcare providers are responding to the fact that over 60% of care occurs outside the hospital and are beginning to embrace the notion of connected health services that bridges personal and clinical environments through – for example – social tools. In addition, within healthcare facilities, organizations are responding to the need for more schedule and process flexibility among core caregivers with more advanced workforce management capabilities. In this case the adoption of next generation multi-channel redundant communications solutions are driving significant improvements in care coordination and workforce allocation, data acquisition and sharing and overall efficiency and effectiveness of services rendered.
VDC has just completed its annual survey of healthcare service providers. We will be publishing the results in our forthcoming Healthcare Mobility report and are eager measure change and compare results to our previous studies. Stay tuned.
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