How can Mobile Technology help Healthcare

An estimated 70% of physicians in the United States have either a smartphone or a tablet PC such as an iPad. They are adopting EHRs and are more techno savvy than ever before.  Mobile health provides ease of access and mobility to both physicians and patients and creates a coordinated care culture.  Let’s look at some of the examples available today of Mobile Technology driving Healthcare.

1. Mobile technology can help patients access care for themselves and others.  They can help with making physician appointments and getting alerts to be reminded of them.  Mobile also allow direct to patient alerts to increase adherence of physician instructions, specifically with regards diets, exercises and medications.

2. Mobile Technology helps in easing the delivery of care in the form of tools to better self monitor. Examples are the mobile apps capturing vital sign as also those which monitor various parameters like blood glucose, heart rate, cholesterol, etc.

3. Mobiles help improve the patient provider communications. Simple text messages and phone calls to verify or report a problem or symptom allow a more direct one to one relationship. While many physicians wonder how this helps them, this significantly adds trust in the eyes of a patient.

4. Mobile Technology also helps in easing the delivery of care by providing direct access to medical providers, ancillary services such as home nursing, insurance companies and the patient’s electronic health record portal. 

5. Mobile health Technologies can provide physicians and laboratories with data measured at much shorter intervals than those of typical in clinic patient visits.  This allows collation of data which can be meaningful analyzed for trends.  For e.g. a physician may increase surveillance of blood glucose levels to help manage diabetic patients.

6. Mobile technology allows the patient information, results, trends to be accessible anywhere.  A patients history can be pulled up on demand on a smartphone in the operating room; Patient charts can be viewed and updated on a tablet while walking in the hospital on rounds.