Three healthcare facilities have made announcements in recent days about new mobile health app offerings, mobile vendor partners, or the time and cost efficiencies brought about by past mobile device deployments.
Boston Children's Hospital announced this week the launch of a new mobile app, called Boston Children's Hospital MyWay, which offers access to information on more than 1,000 physicians, more than 200 clinical programs and six Boston Children's clinical sites. The app also enables users to request appointments, access the MyChildren's Patient Portal website to view their child's medical records, and more. The hospital tapped Meridian for to develop a location-based, turn-by-turn directions feature, too. The app is free to download for iOS and Android users from the platforms' respective app stores.
Meanwhile, Miami Children's Hospital announced that it had partnered with PatientPoint, a provider of care coordination and patient care management solutions, to offer its clinicians an iOS-based care coordination system:
"We signed with PatientPoint in February and went live within 6 weeks with over 40 check-in points across the hospital and with complete integration to our new ADT systems. Based on the iOS platform, HealthSync offers best-in-class patient tracking, patient care coordination and a complete set of mobile applications for patient engagement. We believe it will provide a highly effective, end to end, enterprise-level solution for care coordination and patient engagement during pre-care, point of care and post care," Ed Martinez, CIO of Miami Children's, stated in the release.
The hospital plans to leverage the platform to create various patient engagement technologies, including wellness digital gaming and mobile and online applications, for pre-care and post-care patient reminders as well as medication and treatment adherence. The system will also enable the facility to offer patients tablet-based check-in and check-out as well as to administer clinical surveys.
Finally, Nottingham University Hospital, the fourth largest hospital in the UK, counted time savings and cost efficiencies thanks to a rollout of Cisco Cius tablets, BlackBerry devices, and a mobile-centric platform called NerveCenter. Here's how PC Advisor described the rollout:
About a year ago, pushed to the brink of inefficiency, Nottingham decided it must invest in modern technology, and fast. The hospital's IT group implemented Cisco's end-to-end network. It then purchased Cisco Cius tablets for nurses and doctors and worked with a third-party app developer called NerveCenter to build an Android app (also called NerveCenter) that works as a task-assignment workflow tool. After patient information and doctor and nurse assignments are entered into the PC system, the Hospital@Night coordinator can allocate tasks via the NerveCenter app on a Cisco Cius tablet. The junior doctors receive assignments on their mobile devices be it a Cius tablet or a BlackBerry device, which NerveCenter also supports. The doctor accepts the assignment using the NerveCenter app and it is logged. The whole staff can see if the task is being done, who the patient is and which doctor or nurse is assigned to that patient.
According to the report, the facility estimates about $175,000 in savings thanks to more efficient use of its staff's time as well as more than $500,000 in savings thanks to reductions in patient stays.
