Outsourcing Mobile Device Management in Hospitals: 10 considerations

Various studies and surveys have shown that the use of wireless devices continues to grow at exponential rates in the healthcare industry, which falls in line with the overall trend in society. Like the rest of the World, health care providers are not immune to the allure of the glowing tablet. There is no pill or injection that will slow the spreading trend like many of the diseases providers are trying to treat.

Managing all the wireless devices that make their way into a hospital wireless network tends to be a bit more challenging for the IT Staff. This is another reason why IT leaders are searching for mobile device management solutions for their facility.

Doctors are generally doing their best to manage illness but may not have the time to pay much attention to how their wireless devices are managed. This is totally understandable, but also, very risky for a hospital wireless network. Every day there seems to be another horror story about patient data making its way to social media

One survey citing 702 verified physicians, collected data on the number of those physicians that are currently using mobile technology, what features they use and how often they use them. Here are some of the results:

– Both Electronic Health Record and non-EHR users spend 15-16 hours a week on their smartphone.

– 32% communicate with other physicians or medical staff daily.

– 35% of respondents use their smartphone to research information on medications daily.

One might also assume that, based on this survey of 846 health practitioners using tablets at facilities that have adopted EHR systems, the case for mobile device management in healthcare gains additional momentum.

– The 3 most frequent activities performed on a tablet are sending and receiving emails (73%), accessing electronic health records (70%), and researching information on medications (68%).

One emerging market trend is Video Remote Interpreting (VRI). With the growth of the Limited English Proficiency (LEP) population in the United States, hospitals are at risk not having access to a medically certified interpreter. Doctors can use their iPads and smartphones to access live interpreters by pushing one button with applications like Stratus Video Interpreting.

For those that are not already, the pressure to develop policy, clear security measures, deployment, support and implementation of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiatives can be overwhelming when trying to mitigate risk of lost patient data. Don’t forget those executives that insist on keeping everything on one device.

Make sure your organization’s solution includes these 10 Features of Mobile Device Management in Healthcare:

 1. Works with all devices.

2. Works with all operating systems.

3. No minimum number of users.

4. Easy integration with existing infrastructure.

5. Installation, provisioning and updating not intrusive to end user.

6. Meets management requirements.

7. Meets compliance requirements.

8. Provides analytics.

9. Includes strong security features.

10. Easy to support and ask the vendor if they can manage the application.

        

When it comes to mobile device management, there are hundreds of solutions on the market today. Funny thing is they each do hundreds of different things, but will also doing many of the same things. The ability to work with your vendor to provide or “outsource” your mobile device management in Healthcare will enable your organization to adapt to future changes and ultimately save resources in time, money and people.

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