Mobile email aids care in the home
The changing financial environment in the NHS is forcing health
authorities to consider treating some patients at home rather than in
hospital, says remote solutions provider OpenHand Mobile. This creates
its own challenges, particularly in relation to ensuring the security of
patient files and the logistics of maintaining accurate records.
However, London-based OpenHand Mobile believes that existing mobile
email technology offers a way to solve such problems quickly and cost
effectively.
Treating patients at home calls for access to an individual’s records
as well as to supporting files and documents. It is impractical for
healthcare professionals to carry large paper files with them every time
they travel to see a patient. Aside from the security issues, there is
the additional question of how effective health professionals can be if
they have to return to the office each time to collect a new set of
records and documents. The right mobile email service would enable
health professionals to spend more time out of the office and provide
them with the ability to access a wide range of patient and other data
as and when they need to.
Tim Belfall, Chief Operating Officer of OpenHand Mobile, said, “If
patients are to be treated at home, it is essential that the health
professionals tasked with this have the necessary tools at their
disposal. Mobile email is the ideal technology to support such a
service, and advances in the way such systems are engineered ensure that
patient records and other sensitive files can be accessed quickly and
securely without incurring a huge bill.
“Many health authorities are using mobile email on a limited scale.
Typically, it is used to support management teams and other remote
workers, but the cost of deploying and supporting such email clients as
the Blackberry has made wide-scale implementation prohibitive.
OpenHand’s approach is markedly different and we believe that this will
allow health authorities to deploy mobile email to a wider group of
health professionals. By being network and device-independent, we enable
health trusts to select the most appropriate tools and tariff to meet
their requirements. Our ability to provide a high-bandwidth service at a
low cost is testament to the investment we have made in our latency
technology”, he said.
Source: bjhc&im June 2006
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