Meaningful Mobility

Meaningful mobility is a prerequisite to Stage I Meaningful Use (data access and data sharing), especially by physicians. The key to success is to actually work with clinician workflow, rather than asking them to change it.  Mobility is important because it supports the actual multitasking and "on-the-go" realities and requirements of physicians, nurses, and clinical managers. Beyond anytime and anywhere access, mobility solutions must transform data into visually compelling information that supports better clinical decision making. Further, the mobility solution must guide better choices by incorporating evidence-based medicine and knowledge-based prompting. The goal is to improve clinical decision making at the point of care through data transformation.

It's not enough to provide interpreted or emulated application access or a .pdf view of EHR data via a mobile device. That's tantamount to booking airline tickets on your smartphone using the internet browser. You can do it, but it doesn’t really work. It’s awkward and time-consuming and lacks the value-added native application-quality data transformation that is critical to improved clinical decision-making. So, the patient's serum potassium level is 3.0 milliequivalents per liter. What is the relevance of that value in the context of that patient? Was the drop sudden or gradual? Is the low value chronic? What has been the patient's range? How does that map to the normal range? Has the patient been on potassium replacement of any kind? It is possible to present that data in an informative and visually compelling manner that promotes better choices by practitioners.

In health care we see time and again that those who make data access and data processes difficult for clinicians suffer adoption resistance and usage doldrums. We have learned that delivering mobile intelligence about assigned patients in concert with the workflow of providers is technology that is enthusiastically received and rapidly adopted, and we see high usage levels sustained over many years.