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Mobile Phones “Always There Always On”
The new patient monitoring tool may not be quantifiable right now, but industry experts state that mobility is the next big thing to happen to the healthcare and medical research industry By Vikrant Patnaik
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he healthcare and medical research field is experiencing rapid transitions. With continuous innovation in technologies, healthcare is bringing many better facets of treatment and patient care forward, giving the patients the best of healthcare experience that one could receive. With the growth and ease to access internet and other upcoming technologies, there have been a plethora of changes happening across industries and the healthcare and medical research industries are no exception to it. As on today, the mere definition of healthcare initiatives for hospitals has broadened its horizons from just dispensing basic “treatment” to having more patient concentric services and thus, satisfaction. In this era, with technologies such as internet and mobiles playing a pivotal role in our lives, ensure that such services are within the reach of the common man and patients coming from different socioeconomic strata. Well, what we are talking about is bringing on board a smoother registration processes, better patient care in the hospital premises, improved preoperative observation and post operative care and a robust administration tool. It is a fact that hospital staff and doctors spend large amounts of time in capturing and accessing patient information, which can be reduced to a great extent using a combination of internet’s allied services and mobile technology. Getting quicker and accurate information for quick decision making and actions that are more “to the point” oriented are just some key advantages of
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mobility services in a healthcare environment and which is the need of the hour. While the in-hospital service and experience is commendable today, there still is a large gap in terms of monitoring patients once prescribed to a particular treatment or discharged post treatment. It is quite a hassle for physicians and doctors to keep a track on patients’ health status and there is an innate requirement of continuously monitoring a patient’s health given the support that we can get from technology. Although there are ways and means for keeping a check on the patient’s status of health, we must look at new and innovative ways that are not only simple to use but are omnipresent. If one gets to thinking, the only common denominator that exists across different societal levels is a mobile phone, from a vegetable vendor to an auto-rickshaw driver to a high flying business or corporate person; most of them carry at least one mobile device if not two.
Introduction to smart phones With the different types of mobile phones available in the market, access and affordability has increased multifold. Mobile devices with the latest features such as touch, internet, applications and 3G have made it an extremely handy device that can perform almost everything at the push of a button or a mere “touch”. Healthcare and self care application can be developed allowing both patients and the medical fraternity to use it for multiple functions. Custom enterprise level applications can
be developed for hospital staff for better hospital and patient management. With robust and secure back end web based functions to support, the turn around time can be improved by many folds. Mobile technology can be used in areas like patient monitoring, treatment adherence, geriatric care and wellness, post operative care and follow up, remote patient data capture, chronic disease management, ante natal and maternity care, rural health, stepping up from EMR (Electronic Medical Records) to MMR (Mobile Medical Records), hospital bed side monitoring systems using mobile technology and many more. There are several areas where mobile technology can be used to improve efficiency, save time and costs in healthcare institutions and regulated research, including clinical trials. Some of the key areas that encompass the use of mobile and internet technologies with some business concepts and implementation techniques are discussed ahead. Patient records in hospitals are an important source of information for medical practitioners and the hospital staff to take critical decisions. With primitive methods still being used largely to capture medical records, a systematic and compliant system to record, store and retrieve information is the need of the hour for instant and real time data capture and viewing by the medical staff. An instance of which would be, key patient records should be entered and found quickly in the doctor /nurse/ HOD‘s mobile phone and further can also