Healthcare IT News - December 2007 - (Page 16)

16 Healthcare IT News ■ December 2007 phySIcIaN pRactIcES & aMBulatoRy caRE “today in healthcare, communications is anything but unified.” – Gregg Malkary flows, said Gregg Malkary, founder of the Spyglass Consulting Group in Menlo Park, Calif. “ T he possibilities of the smartphone in healthcare are really untapped right now,” said Malkary. “What we’re really missing is the communications solutions that would provide individuals with a single inbox. The whole concept of unified messaging is so powerful, but today in healthcare, communications is anything but unified.” Malkary suggested that one roadblock to increased smartphone usage is the unfortunate fact that many clinicians would just as soon make it harder to communicate with them. He said that physicians who perform a lot of in-office procedures would www.HealthcareITNews.com lose money if their workflows were interrupted regularly. Physicians practicing primarily in the office environment tend to use smartphones differently than those working regularly in the hospital, according to Andrew Barbash, MD, director of neurosciences at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md. Barbash said that, for physicians in the ambulatory care setting, quick access to drug information is high on the list of appealing applications. Physicians would also benefit from a smartphone’s text messaging capability to communicate with other physicians currently seeing patients in the hospital. And a doctor might even use a phone’s camera to take photos of a skin wound and e-mail it to a specialist. Barbash said most physicians are not likely to use smartphones to access a patient’s electronic medical record, however. “I think with the rise of smartphones you will see doctors using e-mail and text-messaging much more often than they do now,” said Barbash. “And as doctors see their colleagues using smartphones, more of them will want the technology.” ■ More at SmaRT Continued from page 1 Black Bag for the 21st Century: The Evolution of Mobile eHealth Applications. “Physicians want devices and applications that will help them in their nomadic lives. They are looking to gain greater efficiencies at the point-of care setting.” Kasten defines a smartphone as a “converged multipurpose device” which features a combination of Internet access, e-mail access, scheduling software, a built-in camera, contact management software, accelerometers, navigation software, and the ability to read business documents in a variety of formats. “The real challenge in the future will be allowing physicians to use their smartphones seamlessly among all the hospitals they may be affiliated with, and to ensure information security,” Kasten said. If used efficiently, smartphones can help physicians manage their clinical and information work- HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: SMart 1207 vCe Continued from page 15 trials were published, and patients at home could gain access to them if they so desired, he noted. “We have to better understand what kind of medical information patients and consumers can acquire, and then we can tailor our services to meet their needs,” Harris said. Most practices don’t have the resources, or patient base, of Cleveland Clinic. Bria addressed the smaller practice environment, and emphasized the difficulty of turning a paper-based practice into a digitized healthcare space. “The workflow aspects of healthcare are similar in complexity to those in aerospace,” he noted. “When you talk about automating a medical practice, that complexity has to be given some respect.” No ambulatory electronic health record product is a good fit for every practice, Bria said, and no single system provides perfect clinical decision support. For this reason, Bria cautioned that physicians should not assume an “automatic diffusion of improved quality of care” after buying an EHR. “The hidden cost of an EHR is the amount of time you’re going to have to spend changing your practice as a result of implementing,” Bria said. “You will be inefficient initially as a result of the change. That’s why an EHR implementation is a long-term process.” ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e ●Connect: vCe 1207 e ● Connect: SPotwave 1207 http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8176 http://www.spotwave.com http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.spotwave.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8192 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=8246

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Healthcare IT News - December 2007 Contents Paying Docs Seal of Approval Key to Success Stage 4 Stark Payoff New Kids on the Block Real-time Trend On the Block Picture Perfect Head of the Class

Healthcare IT News - December 2007

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