While smartphones and tablets can aid in the on-the-go communication in a healthcare environment, there are legal and regulatory considerations to be addressed.
At the Becker's Hospital Review 6th Annual Meeting in Chicago, panelists discussed new developments in mobile health, one being physicians seeking mobile solutions that integrate into their everyday workflow.
Holly Carnell, JD, associate with McGuireWoods, asked panelists if, and how, they manage the tendencies of physicians to use their own mobile devices in the work environment.
"I'd like to say that we do," said Dave Garrett, senior vice president and CIO of Charlotte, N.C.-based Novant Health. "We do have policies and procedures and all those wonderful things to help protect us, but we also know that stuff occurs. The best defense is a good offense… I cannot stop someone from using an iPhone to take a picture of someone and sending it somewhere…. You can't bulletproof everything. Anyone in here is a day away from the next headline about a breach."
To get in front of this tendency, Mr. Garrett said Novant Health proactively sought out solutions that address the functionality physicians were seeking, such as a secure text messaging solution.
Bruce Darrow, MD, PhD, vice president and CMIO of New York-based Mount Sinai Health System agreed, but added that hospitals and health systems need to do more than simply provide physicians with a means to communicate.
"It is not enough to provide patients and clinicians with a secure means of doing things. You need to provide them with good secure ways of doing things, or they will use [others]," Dr. Darrow said. "We need to adopt not only halfway decent security measures and tell them to use them, but we need to make sure the security measures are as easy to use as non-security measures."
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