Is mHealth a Part of Your Practice?

Simply put, mHealth is the use of wireless and mobile devices to improve health services, health outcomes and health research. mHealth could effectively address issues of medical error rate and staff productivity. Quick access to recorded patient data and real time issues could be sent from doctors or nurses in one area of a facility to doctors and nurses elsewhere in the facility.
An early-stage example of mHealth applications are products like Epocrates, whose free Rx, mobile drug reference application allows U.S. physicians to search brand, generic, and OTC medicines. Or another handy Epocrates app, their free Continuing Medical Education application that offers interactive learning activities across numerous specialty topics that are accredited by AMA, ACPE, and the ANCC. While these examples are hardly what one would call ‘connected healthcare’, they represent the beginning of the mobile healthcare revolution.

mHealth is predicted to become one of the biggest trends this year in the healthcare industry. More than 1,800 healthcare executives in 40 countries ranked it as a significant healthcare trend, along with regulatory environments and cloud computing. The rapidly increasing use of mobile technologies in healthcare certainly has something to do with this. Soon, every hospital and medical center will need an enterprise-wide HIPAA secure wireless platform.

Nine out of 10 doctors aged 35 and younger own smartphones. If there’s any doubt that mobile technology isn’t here to stay, this statistic should remove it. Many young physicians use their mobile devices to text other physicians, hospitalists and sub-specialists. The rapid nature of text messaging leads to a quicker decision-making process and greater productivity, both of which can benefit the patient.

A lack of secure messaging communication standards could lead to problems for healthcare facilities. Privacy is obviously a big issue when it comes to patient health records and HIPAA regulations. Sensitive information ending up in the wrong hands leads to violations, or worse. As a result, it will be vital for hospitals to follow stringent communication protocols.

Security measures, such as encryption, secure data clouds, remote wipe, automatic log-out, and the tracking of message delivery will be paramount to the success of mHealth. With time, the use of mHealth could make a difference in medical costs as well as with illness and disease prevention and treatment. The security protocols and infrastructure created in conjunction with mHealth will be vital to its success.

mHealth is predicted to skyrocket even more as telemedicine continues to play an extremely large role in our healthcare interactions. Virtual appointments and an increased emphasis on touch-free areas, sanitation, and hygiene align with the predicted trends of the growing importance of mobile health in the coming years.