The IT infrastructure convergence has been a hot topic across many sectors but is particularly relevant for healthcare. Tight budgets, stretched human resources, and increasingly strict regulations urge organizations to search for ways they can cut costs and increase patient satisfaction and staff productivity. IT and device convergence are an effective means to achieve just that. Medical tablets play a crucial role in device convergence and optimization of health IT infrastructure management.
The Challenge
Since 2009, the ACA and the HITECH have been incentivizing the adoption of technology to improve patient safety and outcomes. The healthcare sector responded by deploying a broad array of devices and software that collect and provide access to data and enable live communication and collaboration.
As a result, healthcare professionals have to juggle multiple devices and software platforms. Pagers, smartphones, tablets, laptops, PCs, kiosks topped with EHR, HELP, medical imaging, telehealth solutions and other suites - this fragmentation is counter-productive and exhausting for the medical staff.
The multiple devices and multitude of notifications end up distracting caregivers and interfering with their duties. So, often they just choose not to carry them around, as is the case with BYOD smartphones. A study revealed that doctors receive 77+ notifications daily on average, while at least 85% of them are not high priority. The remaining 15%, however, require medical intervention, but they sink beneath the loads of low-priority noise that creates notification fatigue. Clinicians become "overwhelmed or immune to the notifications."
Add in a) the complexity of managing and troubleshooting a highly- fragmented IT infrastructure for the IT department, and b) the cybersecurity vulnerabilities stemming from this fragmentation and lack of centralized oversight. The result is the notorious IT productivity paradox.
Medical Grade Tablets and Barcode Scanners
Medical tablets converge multiple devices in one compact form factor that is easy to carry around, use and maintain. In other words, fewer is better.
For example, our medical grade tablets come embedded with a Honeywell barcode scanner, a tool indispensable for many tasks such as inventory control, drug administrations, or checking dosage, and identifying patients. Since most of these tasks also require a computer for data input and synchronization with EHR, it only makes sense that the EHR-ready medical tablets integrate the barcode scanner. While there are certain duties that require the use of a medical cart computer, for everything else, a medical tablet provides a single device that is far more portable and convenient. But that is just the beginning.
RFID-Enabled Medical Tablet
A medical tablet that reads the barcodes and the increasing number of RFID-provided data not only converges multiple devices but also future-proofs your investment. RFID is the present and the future of healthcare, and organizations will deploy more RFID-enabled technology in the future.
An RFID-enabled medical tablet grows with you as you deploy more RFID beacons and badges. It enables you to process increasingly more data and generate actionable business intelligence reports without requiring additional investments or upgrades.
EHR-Ready Medical Tablet PC
Since EHR is now a part of routine in health care, doctors and nurses have to push around laptops on medical carts, or postpone EHR documentation until they get to the desktop computers. Research reveals that doctors spend 2-3 hours of uncompensated time daily after work on EHR documentation. This situation creates aggravation and the sentiments of resentment and burnout among medical practitioners. It also contributes to the errors and inaccuracies as time passes between the episode of care and the moment the doctor inputs it into the system.
A medical tablet PC that runs a powerful Intel Quad-Core Processor and has ample memory and storage to allow doctors update EHR records during each episode of care eliminates these problems. As doctors provide medical care and input EHR data at the same time, they spend less uncompensated time after work doing the "paperwork." Likewise, live data input and verification eliminates errors, inaccuracies, and duplicate tests.
Top that off with live chats, email, reference checking, secure telehealth solutions, and prescription signing - all in a single device, and you get a Swiss Army Knife for healthcare professionals.
Medical Grade Tablets Streamline User Authentication and IT Infrastructure Management
Medical tablets also embed the features designed to safeguard sensitive electronic patient health information (ePHI) such as biometric reader, CAC or Smart Card Reader, Windows authentication, sandboxing, and encryption. The biometric reader or Smart Card/CAC Reader coupled with Windows login facilitate multi-factor authentication, making security simple and accessible for doctors.
At the same time, remote administration and troubleshooting, remote installation of updates and fixes as well as sandboxing and encryption make the life of your IT department so much easier. And the security of your data and devices - robust and compliant.
Patient Infotainment in the Medical Grade Tablet
Hospitals save a lot of money when a medical practitioner uses the same medical grade tablet for EHR and then introduces the patient to the infotainment system. As patient infotainment systems drive patient satisfaction and improve outcomes, device convergence enables hospitals to do more with less. You can have both - infotainment and EHR bundled in a powerful yet compact form factor.
SummaryMedical tablets allow organizations to converge multiple devices and workflows in one robust solution that adheres to the industry's best standards in safety and security. The advantages of such a convergence include:
- Better information accessibility for caregivers and clinicians.
- Optimized data flow and synchronization.
- Easier deployment and management of new applications.
- Less duplication everywhere from tests to notifications and messages hence decreased tech fatigue.
- Less uncompensated time spent on EHR documentation.
- Lower Total Cost of Ownership of your HIT solutions, and operational and administrative costs.
