A new survey from Zebra Technologies finds UK patients are comfortable with the use of wearables and mobile to monitor conditions and deliver care and that hospitals are ready to deploy them.
More than nine out of ten patients (95 percent) are willing to share health metrics collected from wearable devices with clinicians, according to a new survey and report from Zebra Technologies, Future of Healthcare: 2022 Hospital Vision Study.
The survey, which canvassed the views of nurse managers, IT decision-makers in healthcare and recently hospitalised patients, found that eight out ten patients also feel positive about mobile tools being used to improve their care.
That’s lucky, since the study also estimates that mobile devices will be not only by almost all nurses (97 percent) and physicians (98 percent) by 2022, but also by other care-team members: pharmacists, radiologists, lab technicians and patient transport staff.
Read more: AI diagnostics could save NHS millions, Ultromics claims
Hospital-wide uptake
The report finds rising adoption of clinical mobile solutions across all disciplines by 2022, in fact. This growth includes areas where mobility is already widely used (bedside nurses rising from 65 to 95 percent), as well as a major increase across other areas such as pharmacist and pharmacy technicians (from 42 to 96 percent), lab technicians (from 52 to 96 percent), and intensive care nurses (from 38 to 93 percent).
It claims a reduction in preventable errors as key benefit, with surveyed nursing managers and IT decision-makers saying that they expect clinical mobility to reduce errors in areas including medication administration (61 percent) and specimen collection labelling (52 percent).
The study found that by 2022, 91 percent of nurses are expected to access electronic health records (EHRs), medical and drug databases (92 percent) and lab diagnostic results (88 percent) using a mobile device, reducing time spent away from patients.
Almost seven out of ten of surveyed nurse managers also credit clinical mobility with improving staff communication and collaboration, as well as the quality of patient care. And almost two-thirds of IT decision-makers (64 percent) identify nurse-to-physician communications as a top area for improvement.
Read more: Is IoT the right prescription for getting patients to take their medicine?
Streamlining workflows
The report says that clinical mobility will be augmented with real-time location information to streamline workflows: Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) will be used to locate everything from equipment, supplies and pharmaceuticals to patients and staff. This visibility will allow administrators to increase bed availability, staff workflow and safety.
By 2022, 98 percent of surveyed IT decision-makers expect hospitals to use technology for predictive analytics and early notification of life-threatening conditions, such as sepsis and hospital-acquired infection, with alerts sent to clinicians’ mobile devices.
“Clinical mobility is a highly transformative, powerful trend which is having a significant impact on improving the quality of patient care around the world. The sheer number of nurses and IT managers that replied to our survey to say how much mobility has improved their work speaks to a clear trend of better mobile solutions adoption in healthcare,” said Chris Sullivan, global healthcare practice lead at Zebra Technologies.
“The fact that patients themselves are encouraged and enthusiastic about mobility shows it has a growing association with receiving the best standard of treatment.”