Beyond tablets and BYOD #mHS12

Here at the 4th Annual mHealth Summit, it's no surprise that people are discussing the use of tablet computers at the bedside. Right now, the BYOD (bring your own device) phenomenon is causing some severe headaches in health systems because students and clinicians are bringing their personal mobile devices into the hospitals and using them to access sensitive patient data. The new Apple iPad mini is so small that it fits right into a white coat pocket and can be mistaken for a slim notebook. Robust mobile device management (MDM) solutions haven't been implemented in many hospitals for personal tablets.

Healthcare IT News has a story titled, "Nurses using smartphones to fill IT gaps." They refer to the Spyglass' "Point of Care Computing for Nursing" report, which indicates that 69 percent of hospitals say that their nurses use their personal mobile devices. Ninety-six percent of hospitals believe that first-generation tablets like the iPad aren't a good fit for bedside nursing. Nurses in particular are looking for devices that are durable and that will go through an easy sanitation process. Also, the quality and reliability of the wireless networks within health care systems still remain problematic.

Here are some recent tweets from the mHealth Summit on mobile computing:

IntelHealthIT ‏@IntelHealthIT
New tools like convertible laptops will be important solutions in the future for collaborative care models. @Frost_Sullivan #mhs12

mHealth Summit ‏@mhealthsummit
RT @liamhq: "Let's meet the patient, where they are, with the tools they have" #mhs12

IntelHealthIT ‏@IntelHealthIT
Panel shares the greatest barriers to #healthIT progress: incentives, money, interoperability, reimbursement, value analytics. #mhs12

Windows 8 launched less than 2 months ago. We're seeing new Windows 8 tablets like the Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 (slate) or  laptop/tablet hybrid combination machines like the HP Envy x2. The Sony Vaio Duo 11 is a slider laptop/tablet where the keyboard "slides" out from beneath the screen. Reminds me of some of my older HTC smartphones. What kind of impact will Windows 8 computers have in healthcare? This new generation of tablets have longer battery life and improved performance over any tablets running Windows 7. Therefore, I suspect we will see rapid adoption of these battery-efficient, powerful tablets that can run full-featured enterprise electronic health record (EHR) and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems. The PC that you're using at your workstation will be the same mobile device that you'll carry with you to the bedside.

At the mHealth Summit, Michael Breslow from Philips Healthcare also spoke about the growing trends in telemedicine and the use of computers to improve disease prevention and health maintenance.

2012 mHealth Summit Coverage

The 2012 mHealth Summit coverage on MobileHealthComputing.com is sponsored by HP. HP’s extensive portfolio of products, solutions, services and relationships can help your healthcare organization achieve quality business practices and provide quality patient care. Follow HP Healthcare on Twitter @HPHealthcare