Below is a guest blog from Mathew Taylor, ICT Solutions Strategist & Architect at Intel Corporation, who will be speaking at next week’s Hospital Cloud Forum in New York City.

We live in a mobile world, and healthcare technology is moving in that direction as well. Access to laptops, tablets, smart phones, and electronic medical devices, can play a key role in enabling better care with improved efficiency.

Virtual collaborative services, chronic disease management, and patient education are just three examples of how mobility shifts the healthcare delivery model towards higher quality care at lower cost.

The ability for health professionals to have remote access from anywhere to health data and to be able to share that data securely with patients AND other providers has great value. The latest personal mHealth app may inspire, but the ability for patients and health workers of varying skill levels to collaborate to achieve coordinated care is needed to support long-term improved outcomes, reducing office visits, admissions, and readmissions.

However, mobility requires you to think carefully about your target usage scenarios, like being able to view medical records and imaging data while securely sharing screens. Ensuring devices have the needed performance, security, and manageability to deliver a productive and secure user experience is critical. The 2012 Ponemon Institute survey on Patient Privacy & Data Security shows that the average organization in its study has lost $2.4 million over the last two years due to data breaches, so look for the latest encryption and anti-theft features.

So, as you continue to explore the best uses of mobility, educate yourself to understand what devices can best meet your needs. I encourage you to learn how to choose the right mobile point of care device, protect hand-held devices, and protect data on stolen laptops with anti-theft technology.

Next week on April 16, I’ll be participating in a panel discussion about mobility. If you are in the New York area, come be a part of the Hospital Cloud Forum at the Union League Club in New York City and sit in on the panel, mHealth: Balancing the Benefits and Risks.

What questions do you have about mobility in healthcare IT?

As HIMSS13 approaches, we continue our pre-show guest blog series from health IT industry experts. Below is a guest contribution from Bettina Experton, MD, MPH, founder and CEO of Humetrix, an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine, and a permanent member of the Faculty of the School of Medicine of Paris.

The federal Institute of Medicine has issued a call to reduce the annual toll of 100,000 preventable deaths and $750 billion in wasteful spending within the American healthcare system, caused largely by a lack of up-to-date patient information at the point of care.

While billions of dollars have been invested in establishing public and private health information exchanges (HIEs) to help solve these problems, studies have shown they are falling short of the vision of having an integrated patient record that can facilitate care as patients move between providers and different care settings.

In response to this failure, many healthcare industry CIOs are looking for alternative solutions, including using mobile apps to help patients coordinate and engage in their own care. In addition to offering a viable work-around for the industry’s interoperability issues, apps can help address the critical issues of preventable deaths, injuries and wasteful spending. So many people believe in the power of mobility to help drive and strengthen patient engagement and care coordination that the healthcare mobile applications market is expected to grow by over 70 percent in the next five years.

Among the latest mobile health apps to reach the market is iBlueButton®, which allows physicians and consumers to securely exchange health records and other clinical information at the point of care. The cross-platform data exchange solution seamlessly and securely transfers data between any enabled devices (iOS or Intel-powered Android® smartphones and tablets) and makes the health information actionable by presenting it to consumers and their providers in a usable and actionable format.

Other applications effectively engaging consumers in their care include iTriage® and ZocDoc®. These apps guide consumers through the healthcare process, from helping them check symptoms to choosing a provider available at a given time. The apps pride themselves on helping people find more cost effective care.

Much like HIEs, mobile apps can be a powerful care coordination tool, helping prevent costly adverse events like preventable hospital readmissions, while improving the overall quality of care delivered. The difference is that by putting the power of care in the palms of the patients’ hands, many of the technical and economic barriers that plague other HIE and care coordination solutions can be avoided, thus advancing the objectives of healthcare and health payment reform more quickly.

What do you think?

Mobile technologies help clinicians work more efficiently and enable the care continuum outside of traditional care settings. Increasingly, healthcare workers are expecting to use their own personal mobile device-of-choice within the enterprise setting. This creates issues for IT around device support and serious concerns about data security.

To take a closer look at how personal devices impact health IT management, Intel and Microsoft are teaming up for a presentation next Wednesday, Aug. 8, at 9 a.m. Central Time, during the HIMSS Virtual Briefing “Mobile Health IT: A Glimpse into the Technologies at Work Today in Healthcare.” At this session, you will learn techniques for dealing with these mobile issues. Your goal is to allow data to be available when and where needed while providing your end-users with maximum flexibility consistent with good security practices. We’ll help you get there.

Here’s what on the agenda:

•    How to select the Right Device for Right Workflow
•    Review which Mobile Devices are better for selected workflows
•    Explore how to maximize compute flexibility with good security measures

I’ll be joined by Gareth Hall, Industry Solution Manager, Microsoft, for the discussion and we’ll show you how to get the most out of going mobile. Here’s a sneak peak at what you can expect to hear:

One size does not fit all
Different tasks (e.g., consumption, creation, sharing, collaboration) require different mobile tools. Find the right device for the right task.

Collaborative workflows
Collaborative teams treating patients in the lowest-cost setting consistent with quality care can change the care delivery paradigm. For example, they can decrease readmissions, unneeded trips to the emergency department, and delay and rework within the hospital.

Secure, flexible compute models
How you deliver information to mobile devices can maximize the IT investment, data security, and flexibility. Secure computing is an imperative—no breaches allowed!

What questions do you have about mobile?