Mobile devices may be enabling nurses to do more at the point of care, but a new survey indicates those devices are causing nurses to do more work and less care – and with dangerous consequences.

The issue, says the Gary and Mary West Health Institute, is interoperability – or a lack of it. While nurses have more devices to work with, those devices aren't synching with each other or the electronic health record. So they're doing more work to gather health data and put it where it's supposed to be stored. And that's leading to more mistakes.

The survey ties together two issues dear to mHealth – nurses, those frontline healthcare workers who would benefit most from mobile solutions, and the idea that devices should not only collect data but do something with it. In this case, there's growing evidence that too many of those devices are limited in how they transmit data.

The West Health Institute, working with Harris Poll, surveyed 526 nurses in January on their experiences with medical devices. Among the most disturbing findings, they found that half of the nurses said they've witnessed a medical error because of a lack of device coordination, and almost half said one out of every four medical errors and adverse events could be prevented by device interoperability.

"The survey results demonstrate the toll the lack of interoperability takes on first-degree healthcare workers – the nurses who are responsible for both caring for patients and programming and monitoring the devices," West Health Institute officials concluded. "Their perspective on the impact lack of interoperability has on their ability to care for patients; the potential for medical errors; how they spend their time; and, ultimately, satisfaction with their work provides critical context to an issue that appears to be simply technical in nature."

The report calls federal officials to task for not including medical devices in its framework for a national interoperable healthcare network, and specifically questions why the Food and Drug Administration hasn't followed through on its 2014 pledge to recognize open standards for medical device communication and offer guidance for manufacturers.

According to a HIMSS Analytics report, 90 percent of hospitals surveyed use six or more devices that could be integrated with the EHR, yet only a third are integrating devices with the medical record. Even among those hospitals focusing on interoperability, the HIMSS survey found that only three types of devices, on average, are being synched with the EHR.

In its survey, the West Health Institute found that virtually every nurse uses at least one mobile device or technology during his or her shift – and nearly half said that handling or working with those devices was "among the least productive ways they spend their time." Almost three-quarters said it's "burdensome" to collect and coordinate data from medical devices that are interoperable, and nearly half said an error is "extremely or very likely to occur" when information is passed manually from one device to another.

"Devices that are connected to each other – such as a patient chart to vital signs machines, to blood glucose monitors, etc. – would eliminate data entry, which is a huge risk of error," one nurse commented in the survey.

The West Health Institute survey is urging Congressional leaders and federal officials to include medical devices in interoperability guidelines, saying it's "critical to transforming the delivery of healthcare to the automated, connected and coordinated future of care we all imagine."

Until then, the institute warns, the healthcare industry will continue to struggle with medical errors, which account for between 210,000 and 440,000 preventable deaths in hospitals each year and represent the third leading cause of death in the U.S.