Many clinicians working in hospitals use mobile devices in patient care, according to separate reports by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society and Spyglass Consulting Group, MobiHealthNews reports.
HIMSS Survey Findings
For the second annual HIMSS Mobile Technology Survey -- which was sponsored by Qualcomm Life -- researchers polled 180 IT professionals working at health care facilities (Dolan, MobiHealthNews, 12/4).
The report found that about half of surveyed IT professionals believe that the use of mobile technology will significantly affect patient care. It also found that:
- 45% of respondents said clinicians at their organization use mobile devices to collect data at a patient's bedside, up from 30% last year;
- 38% said clinicians use mobile devices to read bar codes, up from 23% last year;
- 34% said clinicians monitor data from mobile devices, up from 27% last year (Walsh, Clinical Innovation & Technology, 12/3); and
- 27% said clinicians use the camera on their mobile device to capture patient data, up from 13% last year.
About 25% of respondents said that all patient data captured by clinicians' mobile devices are integrated with the patient's electronic health record (MobiHealthNews, 12/4).
About three-quarters of surveyed IT professionals said they expect their organization to expand its use of mobile health devices in the future, with tablet computers seeing the greatest growth projections (Clinical Innovation & Technology, 12/4).
Separate Report on Nurses' Mobile Health Usage
In related news, a separate report from Spyglass Consulting Group found that 69% of surveyed hospital nurses said they use their smartphones for personal and clinical communications while on the job. The report also found that:
96% of surveyed nurses said that first generation tablet computers did not work well for bedside nursing because of durability concerns, data entry limitations and other issues (Perna, Healthcare Informatics, 12/3); and
25% said they were dissatisfied with the quality and reliability of their facility's wireless network (Miliard, Healthcare IT News, 12/3).