Healthcare Technology Featured Article

May 31, 2012

VA to Give iPads to Veterans' Families to Communicate with Doctors


As mobile technology is taking over healthcare in many ways, now the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) is jumping in, too.

One thousand family caregivers of veterans will be given Apple iPads loaded with apps to help them provide care and communicate with veterans’ physicians, according to a story by Pamela Lewis Dolan. The caregivers will test the usability and utility of VA-developed mobile apps, the story reports. Veterans will be able to share their health information with any healthcare provider, even if they’re not part of the VA.

Called the “Clinic-in-Hand” pilot program, VA spokeswoman Josephine Schuda told Dolan the iPads and their loaded apps are “designed to increase the convenience of health care management and strengthen communication among veterans, family caregivers and clinicians.”

Nearly half of the physicians in the US use tablets, and more than 80 percent of them have smartphones, according to mobihealthnews.com. Allowing caregivers to have access to physicians will permit the exchange of data about patients’ conditions to keep them safe at home. Remote monitoring devices, part of mobile health (mHealth), let healthcare providers monitor patients’ heart rates, blood pressure and other vital signs from their homes and intervene, when necessary.

The VA technology, including secure, two-way exchange of health data among all three parties, will also provide health care management tools for administrative needs and patient education. Schuda told Dolan that subsequent programs will pilot other devices and operating systems.

Apps for the pilot program, and additional apps that are not part of it, can be obtained at the VA’s app store for download on any smartphone or tablet, according to the story.

Apps also will be developed and launched during a phase of the program that will give physicians mobile access to some of the same functions available to them on the VA’s electronic health record system, Dolan writes. Schuda told her that although non-VA physicians will not be a part of the mobile health program, veterans can share their information with any physician from their mobile devices regardless of affiliation.




Edited by Rich Steeves
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