Dive Brief:
- Mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous in hospitals and having a positive impact on patient care, a new JAMF survey finds.
- The software company, which works mostly with Apple products, surveyed 600 global healthcare IT leaders on their use of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. Nine in 10 said their organizations have implemented or plan to implement a mobile device initiative.
- Nearly all (96%) reported an increase in patient experience scores when mobile devices were deployed, with a third of those claiming major improvement.
Dive Insight:
With the increasing need to please patients as consumers, mobile device use is only going to grow. Nearly half of organizations (47%) plan to increase their usage of hand-held technologies within the next two years.
When it comes to use cases, the highest support is for clinical care teams, with 91% of respondents saying these would benefit from a mobile device initiative. For example, 67% said mobile devices improve communication among a patient’s care team and 52% said they increase access to medical records.
Other areas that stand to gain include administrative staff (73%), nonclinical staff (54%), long-term patient stay (47%) and short-term patient stay.
At organizations that use mobile devices, the most common areas are nurses stations (72%), administrative offices (63%) and patient rooms (56%).
But there are risks when healthcare organizations allow widespread use of mobile devices, the biggest being privacy and security. Just 78% of respondents reported using mobile device management solution to secure mobile devices, and less than half are very satisfied with their current MDM. Their main gripes centered around security, cost and training.
In a recent Zebra Technologies study, 98% of doctors, 97% of nurses and 96% of pharmacists at acute care hospitals said they expect to use mobile technologies by 2022. More than seven in 10 hospitals credited digital solutions with improving patient care, while more than half said they reduce costs of care.
“Bring your own device” use is also on the rise, with 71% of clinicians saying their hospitals allow some BYOD — up from 58% in 2016, according to a 2017 Spõk survey of 350 healthcare leaders. The main reason organizations bar BYOD is data security, but strict BYOD policies are helping to address that and other concerns. Driving this trend are ease of communication, cost savings, workflow efficiencies and physician demand.