Motorola's principal for Global Healthcare Solutions, Vivian Funkhouser presented at the Mobility & Wireless pavillion at HIMSS this week. Her presentation was called: Mobility ROI: How it can help your hospital navigate challenging economic times.
Funkhouser began her talk by noting that research analyst firm Gartner estimates that by next year, half of all enterprises will have migrated away from siloed mobile applications. Enterprises, including hospitals, will no longer depend on a dedicated mobile device for just one application--enterprises will be bundling in multiple applications, Funkhouser said.
While it shows how plodding enterprise IT is when it comes to mobile communications adoption, the statistic also demonstrates that the infrastructure and communications group of wireless health services--like using mobile devices to improve efficiencies in care at clinics--has finally reached a tipping point.
According to Motorola's own most recent research, about 80 percent of global information technology decision makers within the healthcare industry said that mobile technologies are more important to their organizations this year than they were in 2008.
The Motorola report also concluded that the key applications driving investment in healthcare include EHRs (surprise, surprise) driven by increasing regulations, computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and medication administration. The company also found it noteworthy that those decision makers surveyed said investment in asset tracking and asset/inventory management had increased or would increase.
Motorola found that using applications like those listed above helped healthcare workers to save about 39 minutes each day. That time could lead to better patient care, more face time with patients and fewer medical errors, Motorola report explained.
"Deploy for today," Funkhouser advised the audience at HIMSS, "but plan for tomorrow. Ensure that the technology you implement is able to support what is on your list for the next 18 months, but also make sure it can support what is in the plans for the next three to five years."
Gartner suggests that Microsoft Windows Mobile is the mobile operating system that is most robust and will have the most life for ruggedized handheld devices. "Use Windows Mobile to reduce risk," Funkhouser said.
The mobihealthnews team caught up with Funkhouser after her presentation to discuss Motorola's various handsets and devices aimed at nurses, clinicians as well as everyone else employed full-time by a hospital. Devices range from simple to use flip phones with voice over WLAN, text, barcode scanning, push-to-talk and nurse alarms to bulky ruggedized smartphones running on Windows Mobile. (Funkhouser wasn't shy about dropping the phones a few times on thinly carpeted concrete to demonstrate their ruggedness.)
While Motorola's offerings for devices and WLAN network solutions are manifold and customizable, the interesting takeaway for us was the company's focus on every type of hospital worker: from nurses to clinicians to housekeepers and everything in between. Physicians? Not so much.
Doctors are more likely to use their own personal PDA or smartphone, "which, of course, we hope is a Motorola Q," Funkhouser quipped. Since many physicians are not employed directly by the hospitals or clinics in which they work, marketing to them is not the same as marketing to the large enterprises.
For more from Motorola's Funkhouser, check out this series of videos the company put together to discuss their recent report, 2009 Enterprise Mobility Barometer.
