You don’t need a study to tell you that almost everyone owns a smartphone or a tablet, but here’s one that puts things in perspective.
The smartphone market is expected to be worth $355 billion, by next year, with 6 billion devices in circulation.
Beyond helping people stay in touch with each other, these devices can provide endless entertainment, enable online shopping, give directions and much, much more.
Lately, they’ve been streamlining clinical workflows and improving health outcomes, too.
We’re talking about the Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) trend, in which doctors and nurses are managing their workload from their personal smartphones and tablets.
The global market for BYOD is expected to reach 5.5 Million in 2027, thanks in part to an increased adoption from the healthcare industry.
According to a 2017 HIMSS Analytics study, 80 percent of healthcare workers use tablets and 42 percent use smartphones to access clinical information.
There are several reasons why health organizations are starting to embrace BYOD. Let’s explore a few.
Increases physicians’ productivity
For one, clinicians are growing tired of outdated communication devices in hospitals. Landline phones, pagers, and EHR-based messaging tools only slow them down.
It’s much more convenient for doctors and nurses to use their own devices to staying on top of their to-do lists. A physician might use their smartphone to answer emails and phone calls about medication refills, and patient diagnoses, or read lab results.
The same device allows them to receive real-time data via Bluetooth from a patient’s wearable device.
“The more data you can collect — from devices, from sensors, from smartphones — the more this data can be applied towards sophisticated algorithms that help deliver better care,” says Orthogonal, a medical software developer.
There’s no need to physically examine a chronically ill patient. The doctor can simply examine the PDF version of the labs they just downloaded on their phone, containing key information from sleep patterns to glucose levels, blood pressure and cholesterol.
These immediate results lead to quicker diagnoses and more efficient patient care all thanks to the BYOD way of working.
Slashes health costs and improves patient interaction
The main financial benefit of BYOD for hospitals is that it saves them money on buying new hardware. BYOD also has the potential to significantly improve clinical trial recruitment.
For years, hospitals and universities have been struggling with patient recruitment for clinical trials. But the rise of BYOD proved that people are more willing to take part in these trials when they can bring own smartphones.
What’s more, a lot of medical devices such as wearable are already collecting data that is relevant to clinical trials. This includes dialysis and glucose monitoring devices.
These devices can be used to transfer health data to a clinician’s tablet and be assured that their information will be deleted at the end of the study. BYOD was linked to increased retention, enhanced data integrity, and increased compliance in clinical trials.
The downside: security concerns
BYOD has a lot of benefits, so why isn’t it used in every hospital and clinic across the country? Security. In fact, 78 percent of organizations say security concerns are the number one reason they are reluctant to use BYOD. These concerns are not without ground.
Employee-owned and other unsecure mobile devices were among the top security threats to healthcare organizations in the past years.
Governmental public health agencies have yet to catch up with the widespread use of BYOD in healthcare. The HHS doesn’t require organizations to have measures for BYOD, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health (ONC) just recently developed guidance on securing mobile devices.
As a result, very few health organizations have a clear BYOD policy, which makes them vulnerable to security breaches. And the cost of a data security breach is steep.
In 2017, Children’s Medical Center of Dallas had to pay $3.2 million to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after a patient privacy data leak from a non-password protected BlackBerry device.
Patients’ sensitive information such as financial, health, and legal data can be easily exposed if a nurse’s or a doctor’s BYOD is:
- Lost or stolen
- Not password-protected
- Shared with third parties such as family members
In an effort to regain control over data across their organization, healthcare facilities have started to upgrade their technical infrastructure. According to a recent study, 9 out of 10 hospitals are investing in secure mobile platforms and hardened mobile devices.
One overlooked disadvantage of BYOD is that doctors’ personal smartphones often get contaminated with hospital bacteria. Drug resistant organisms can be carried into a health professional’s home or transmitted to other patients.
Smartphones like the Zebra TC51 and the Honeywell Dolphin are specifically for hospital environments.
Resilient enough to be dropped on the floor, these phones have built-in barcode scanners. All their screw holes are covered to keep germs at bay, avoiding healthcare-associated infection (HAI).
While these smartphones are great solutions, there are simpler, more cost-efficient ways to mitigate the threats associated with BYOD.It start with educating clinicians.
Clear guidelines should answer questions such as “Who can use BYOD?” “What counts as a legitimate medical reason to use a smartphones?” “What types of information can be transmitted?” or “What doctors can download on a flash drive?”
Employees should be instructed to periodically scan their devices for viruses and avoid connecting to wifi hotspots in restaurants, bars, or hotels, where hackers could easily intercept them.
Modern mobile device management (MDM) systems are able to track the location of all devices used within a healthcare setting, including BYOD. Mobile devices can be locked remotely and sensitive data can be wiped from a lost or stolen phone.
Other security measures include encrypting mobile apps before downloading them onto devices. In an ideal BYOD healthcare environment, the staff would access and interact with patients’ information, but that data would not reside on the device.
This is perhaps one of the greatest challenges for medical device manufacturers and software developers. Companies like Orthogonal and Medical Insight are currently working on designing software that enable BYOD, without sacrificing data security, employee workflow or the user experience.
It’s up to health institutions and device manufacturers to find feasible, secure solutions for adopting BYOD and reap all it’s benefits from reduced costs to increase staff productivity and patient satisfaction.
