mHEALTH in PATIENT MONITORING

Healthy relationship between physician/nurse and patient is what every patient would look forward to. An effective patient monitoring system is needed for this to happen. Patient monitoring is hence gaining traction and the proliferating technology trends have made it easier.

Scenario

Today, most of the doctors are IT savvy and are demanding to have a user friendly system. Not just doctors, even the patients/support staff in a hospital are looking for everything in a mobile device – be it services, games or apps. According to the survey of Statista 2018, the percentage of internet usage from mobile phones has grown to 52.2 % in year 2018 while it was just 10.7% in year 2012. It clearly indicates that people now prefer using internet from their mobiles rather than the web. With these revolutions, the healthcare industry is also matching this pace without being left behind. Therefore, in a healthcare environment too, it is important that the IT systems which are going to be deployed or used should be mobile ready both for clinical administrators and patients.

Solution

In this regard, a Hospital Information Management System (HIMS) plays a vital role in supporting the hospital to provide a quality healthcare to its patients. In addition to a mobile ready HIMS, hospitals are now getting attracted to specialized modules and mobile apps for enhancing the patient care across various verticals. A few of them are as given below:-

For Clinicians:–

• Physician’s Desk or EMR : A cloud ready and device compatible application for physicians will be a very impactful tool to monitor a patient’s health and provide consultation being anywhere. Such a system could be used as a Computer on Wheel (COW) if Wi-Fi is enabled. It must be capable of making template based notes entry and creating a quick list for patients/orders/drugs. With such provisions, the application would be able to reduce the time taken per patient consultation. It would help the doctors to view the status of the ordered tests and results of completed tests while ensuring that there is no manual intervention in posting of results. The doctor could also get notified on any abnormalities in the patient’s report which thereby enhances the patient care.

• Electronic Orders : A mobile app for the ward in-charges is an effective tool to monitor the real time health trends of patient. With enhanced provisions like multiple service ordering from a single window, online viewing of results, color code indicators for patient’s special needs, etc., it would contribute in improving the patient-nurse relationship.

• Medical Administration Record: When a MAR is available as a standalone mobile app, it can speed up the prescribing process and reduce the prescription errors to a large rate. The app must help the physician as well as the nurse to keep a track of prescribed and consumed medicines along with their dosage details. It should further make the refilling of medications as easy as the click of a mouse. It must provide real-time monitoring of duplicate drug orders, missed medications, next schedule for the medication and many more. With these provisions, the mobile ready MAR would hence help in improving patient care and workflow efficiency by supporting the Six Rights of Medication Administration: Right patient, Right drug, Right dose, Right route, Right time and Right documentation.

• Tele-Medicine : Telemedicine is a platform to connect the patient and the doctor. With a simple and user friendly layout, it must be packed with rich features for the doctor to look into all information about the patient in a single screen. It should help “Patients” to track a doctor’s availability, book appointment, create their own credentials to view all their clinical information and medical records from their own space. The “Doctors” should be able to use their credentials to view the waiting list of patients and do a video chat with a chosen patient. While the doctor is doing the online examination on the patient, he must be able to raise online orders for lab, diagnostic orders and medications, record the treatment plan with primary diagnosis, monitor the previous investigation order’s result, make template based notes entry and many more to mention.

For the Management :- 

• Dashboard : A mobile ready Dashboard must serve as management tool to track the real time performance of various branches of a hospital across various verticals from a single screen. To help users get a real time information anywhere anytime on the move, the application must be cloud ready and a multi-tenant system. It must cover all the key metrics across various departments like Billing, Lab, Diagnostic, Pharmacy, Inventory, OT, etc. with at least a drill down of 2 levels. By monitoring these metrics across various departments, the management can thereby improve their patient monitoring.

For the Patients :- 

• Portal for Patients :  The portal must act as a bridge connecting the patients and the  hospital. It must be an Electronic Vault of Patient Information on the cloud that can be easily accessed by the patients anywhere anytime. A user friendly platform for Patients to access their health records will improve their communication with their treating hospital and doctors. With features like grouping the entire family’s health records under one credential, the patients can access the health records of each of their family members without having to sign out every time. The mobile app must be able to help the patients in booking doctor appointments, tracking their ordered services and viewing their completed test reports, accessing bills and their previous visits, etc. In addition to these features, it must also notify the patients on their next follow up visits and enable the virtual consultation between the patient and doctor. Patients will prefer it as a HTML5 application as well as a mobile app.

With the digital transformation in Healthcare Industry, apart from m-Health, other technologies like AI, IOT, machine learning, wearables and remote healthcare are now coming into play to enhance the patient care.

For More Information,

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