According to the White Paper today's busy clinicians are demanding instant-on, always-connected mobile point of care solutions and typically use as many as ten different types of device on any given day; access to timely, accurate information and communications can be a matter of life or death.

But the White Paper says, use of mobile solutions to access information is just the tip of the iceberg; the real benefit lies in communication and collaboration in real-time, whenever and wherever the clinician is working. The ability to consult expeditiously with other team members (specialists, pharmacists and nursing staff) allows the clinician to resolve questions without delay, ensuring best patient care and represents actually a 'second wave' in the development of mobile solutions.

Jan Duffy, Research Director of IDC Healthcare Insights EMEA said "the evidence is in - collaborative workflows lead to improved patient care and better treatment outcomes. Collaboration, communication and coordination underpin the future of healthcare delivery."

Mark Blatt, worldwide medical director of Intel said "collaboration is a work style; it requires more than a commitment to using mobile solutions. It requires the right mobile device for the right task, it depends on workflows that are in themselves collaborative, and it must be supported by the right culture and computing model in a secure mobile environment. Clinicians understand these needs, but many healthcare provider organisations seem to be unable to satisfy them."

The report contains a mixture of primary and secondary research leveraging existing studies and resources from IDC Health Insights; these include results from a study of 50 hospitals and their clinical mobility decision makers in North America and Europe.

Other important insights from the report include:

• Security was ranked as the most important attribute for mobile devices used in healthcare settings by 54% of survey respondents across the globe.
• Application servers (62%), client/desktop virtualization (50%), and software distribution solutions to manage and support mobile applications (50%) were among the top 3 infrastructure technologies in production and were among the top 5 for future investment.
• Laptops are the dominant mobile device (84%), but healthcare provider organizations will be increasingly investing in smartphones and tablets in the next 12 to 24 months.
• Spending on mobile point of care solutions by Western European healthcare providers is expected to grow from $1.4 billion in 2010 to $2.5 billion in 2015, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.4%.

The report concludes that the next 10 years represent the second wave of clinical mobility with significant investment in the underlying infrastructure technologies to support the mainstream use of Mobile Point of Care (MPOC) solutions. Increased adoption of EMR/Electronic Health Records and other clinical systems will improve access to electronic health information, thus accelerating the use of mobile devices to deliver care, collaborate with care team members, and engage patients. The effective use of mobile healthcare solutions will enable healthcare organizations to pursue 'Lean Healthcare' and clinical transformation initiatives by removing waste, delay, and rework from the system through improved, real-time communication between care team members and, ultimately, consumers. Finally, MPOC strategies will help to evolve workflows from being centered on the convenience of clinicians to being more patient centric and thus more focused on improving the patient experience, quality of care, and patient safety.

Related news articles:

• The Second Wave of Clinical Mobility: Strategic Solution Investments for Mobile Point of Care in Western Europe (Publication)
• Intel's Profile

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