Sutter Care at Home, the home care affiliate of California-based Sutter Health, has announced that about 20 percent of its 1,000 clinicians who use mobile electronic health records (EHRs) are now working on tablets the organization has provided, according to a story at healthdatamanagement.com.
Initially, Sutter Care at Home deployed EHRs on smartphones. With laptops in a facility, unnecessary features can be turned off, access can be restricted, use can be monitored and, if necessary, hard drives can be remotely erased, Philip Chuang, Ph.D., director of information services at Sutter Care at Home, said in the story. He told healthdatamanagement.com that “the tools exist to do the same with truly mobile devices that are in the field all the time.”
And it’s happening everywhere. Angela Haupt at usnews.com predicts that “smart phones and tablet computers could potentially redefine healthcare, because these handheld devices, “far more flexible and bedside-friendly than even small laptops,” can help doctors provide safer, better, and faster care by allowing them and other caregivers “to educate themselves and their patients on the fly.”
Sutter Care at Home was concerned about ergonomics with mobile devices, particularly smartphones. EHRs are a whole different universe from texting and surfing on a smartphone, according to the story. “Physicians and nurses hop on a computer in a facility for a few seconds or minutes to document, and then get off,” the story reports.
A clinician with a smartphone or tablet in the field is usually working for a much longer time on a small device. “They must think of how they sit, hold or place the device, and not to stare at the device all the time,” Chuang told healthdatamanagement.com.
All that “hunching over” to scan mobile phones or table computer screens can take really hurt the joints and bones in your neck, claim doctors,” writes Jonathan Benson at naturalnews.com. He says that doctors “have seen a massive increase in the number of patients coming to them with ‘text neck’ symptoms.” And in some cases, “text neck” can even cause an individual’s “natural neck curvatures (to) become reversed,” leading to chronic headaches and even neurological problems.
Chuang cautions that organizations need to “clearly define what they hope to accomplish with an EHR on a mobile device. If the objective is to deploy a device as the primary device, then you have to think differently than if it is an additional device. Are you really doing this so work can be done?”
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Deborah DiSesa Hirsch is an award-winning health and technology writer who has worked for newspapers, magazines and IBM in her 20-year career. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Rich Steeves
