Quick question (hopefully) - if you or your colleagues introduced mobile devices / tablets for your RMO workforce to use for clinical work at some point in the past 2-3 years, did you bother tracking the said devices so that they don’t go AWOL. …And if you did, what did you use to track them? Also, if you have any other advice, please post it here
Btw, I am not in any way singling out RMOs as an “irresponsible” group - just super mobile, non-permanent and dealing with multiple handovers in a 24hr period, so just more likely to displace a device, that’s all!
We investigated doing this however it raises many questions around even if you can track it, who would go and recover it or confront the person with it, are you going to pay for monitoring, etc. We have rolled out a large number of ipads and tablets (several hundred)and have lost 3 in the last 15months. We ask staff to treat them as they would the clinical notes therefore don’t leave them lying around and as they would with other clinical equipment take care of it.
Mobile Device Management suites all have the ability to remotely wipe and track devices
We have now given every house officer a phone - as we use a phone based paging replacement - over the preceding few years of trials - we have not lost a phone to advertant/inadvertant misplacement - we did loose a few to damage
(we have lost a lot of paper with clinical details all over them!)
we did do a “patient engagement trial” and those were not enrolled on the MDM - and the trial ended but we left the devices there - one still remains of the 25 we started with - we have no idea when or how the rest left the hospital - but we chalked it up to experience
we are now investing in having charges and stands on the beds for the further roll out of patient entertainment systems
Apologies for the late response - I did read at the time but only getting a chance to respond now. Thanks @jenp and @lara for the detailed responses. We are still trying to crack things here, but knowing your experience on this has helped going forward - cheers!
Medic Bleep and Cortex certainly appear good. Cortex has a paper associated with its usage as well (Foo et al 2015, Mobile task management tool that improves workflow of an acute general surgical service) as does another NZ developed mobile clinical communication
system, Smartpage (Cusack and Parry 2014, Customising doctor nurse communications). Whilst it is an important part of evaluation, I think it will be tricky to differentiate between these and other similar mobile communication systems on the basis of clinician
satisfaction and time savings alone. Robert Wu’s research group in Canada has been very good at studying social and organisational implications from communication systems as well
Hi Era et al. We have rolled out shared devices for overnight call to our RMOs. It seems to be going well. I am interested in byod and that seems to be trickier. We are using iPhones and iPads, dejected due to security concerns with android devices.
Hi Era, @bev and others, we have long had all our RMO’s carrying a phone and also currently a pager, we are looking at different options for pagers such as cortex and smartpage as we have electronic observations and would like to move to automated alerting in the future. The challenge will be around getting the right device in the right place at the right time, something I am grappling with at the moment in our world of being still very paper heavy and teams wanting to be very mobile. So i am keen to follow this thread to see if anyone has cracked that nugget
Ditto from MidCentral. We have been thinking hard about the issue and the road map to replacing pagers. We got to the point of issuing a RFP but then realized we had not thought hard enough and have gone back to drawing board. Happy to discuss our oversights, but would be as keen to hear how others are solving the same challenge.
I recommend that you discuss this with @janet.liang as her PhD was all about this. She developed a theory to help make decisions about
evaluating and choosing products that match the need.
We are trying to crack the BYOD / pager replacement thing here in Birmingham too. We have a solution on the BYOD front - secure app containers. The only issue is the £££, which I’m getting close to solving. The pager replacement side of things also comes down to money and procurement. There are a plethora of acceptable solutions out there, it is more a matter of choosing one and then implementing it wisely with good digital clinical leadership.
I’d be happy to outline the UK success stories on this front, either electronically or in person. I’m also visiting a couple of the leading lights in this regard before Emerging Health etih
Thanks for the replies everyone - sorry I’ve been out of touch. Let’s keep this one going for mobile solution lightbulb moments!
So, we are hopefully going to be trialling tablets for our acute surgical RMOs for all their clinical assessment documentation, results checking and acute theatre booking needs at ADHB … I’ll update in the next few months as to how we are going with that.
Re: secure messaging - I believe that’s being investigated by the surgical department as the current WhatsApp system that they have informally established is not the way to go If I hear of any development on that front, I will update here.
With the all of government Microsoft deal there is definitely enthusiasm for finding potential Microsoft solutions in public sector (“already paid for”)
We’re (ADHB) trying out MS Teams for secure messaging/job lists – anyone managed to get this going successfully in health/medical team setting, e.g. RMOs?
Or know of anywhere that has?
By “successful” I mean good user experience, quick, efficient, gets people off WhatsApp, etc.
Cheers
Greg
Dr Greg Williams
Paediatrician | Service Clinical Director, General Paediatrics
Cross-system (Ambulatory including hospital OPD / Community DHB / GP / NGO etc):
‘Chat’ / ? Photo sharing (? Out ot patient context)
-Messaging-Task management
-Assessments (e.g. Wound Management, Pre-op assessment) cross system
Potential for remote / off site EWS monitoring (e.g. ARC or step down facilities / remote hospitals) ideally with integrated virtual health capabilities
Cortex: Excellent for team functioning / multidisciplinary / clinical notes / task management in the IP context
Patientrack / Smartpage: Obs / EWS / Assessments → task notification and paging (evolving integration) for IP. ALSO potential for clinical notes and community extension (incl Community DHB and 1ry care incl ARC.
Celo: Good for messaging/ communication as an adjunct to the above now being piloted cross system to Primary Care. BUT partial duplication of the above in some situations, so use situations. needs to be clearly defined
So need to be clear on the longer term vision investment / system coverage strategy as well as the specitic needs (e.g. Inpatient)
Hey Bev as an aside I note you include images in the above discussion but aren’t you guys using waba logic for images? We’re just about to launch for our medical photography team and then on to stem.
Hi All-This is a very interesting topic and by my perusal it doesn’t appear that anyone has decided on or found a solution for the stated problem.
May I ask what would happen in a disaster if pagers were no longer in use and cell phone and internet reception was down?
I no longer carry a pager but I do have one at home in my drawer should cell go down…in which case I would have to find another phone with a different provider to use or get in my car and drive to hospital.
This may be a good topic to put on agenda for upcoming meeting.
Cheers
Sari
If I hear of any development on that front, I will update here.