mHealth and EHRs are intersecting in creative ways, as evidenced by an Atlanta company's new iPad-enabled platform for the home health and hospice market.
Brightree recently unveiled the EHR point-of-care app, calling it the first "native iOS app" for home health and hospice agencies. Specialty-specific platforms are a hot commodity, and many are being developed as mobile tools to target clinicians outside the traditional hospital setting. In fact, companies like Practice Fusion and Kareo are making a name for themselves in the post-acute care environment with platforms that can be easily accessed on mobile devices.
Another player in the market is HealthFusion, a 16-year-old company that touts its MediTouch EHR as "the only EHR that's native to the iPad," according to company co-founder Sol Lizerbram.
"How do you practice healthcare outside the hospital without mHealth?" Lizerbram asked, adding that patient-centered medical home guidelines practically cry out for a platform that's accessible via mobile device. "You just can't do it these days with a PC."
What's more, Lizerbram added, today's EHRs have to be customizable. Legacy EHRs are too static, with templates that don't conform with the different specialties and healthcare mandates that no dominate the market.
Jon Skypek, Brightree's project manager, told mHealth News he spent many hours with home health and hospice nurses on the road, examining their workflows and witnessing the challenges of collecting data in locations outside the hospital or clinic. This is where the traditional legacy EMR platform isn't working, he said, and where mHealth innovation can make a difference.
"This is an environment where you can't set something up in the morning and leave it there all day," Skypek said. "It's a mobile environment, and even the idea of bringing a two- or three- or four-pound laptop is just annoying."
Likewise, he said, "the accuracy of documentation goes down as soon as you step outside that door. You need solutions that are more than just mobile web pages."
"What's the best form factor that allows me to react to the unknown?" Skypek asked.
As a case in point, Lizerbram offered a recent customer experience. A doctor using the MediTouch EHR on his iPad, he said, was able to access a patient's records while sitting in the back of a taxi, coordinate with a hospital's emergency room as the patient was being brought in by ambulance, and have the patient's complete medical history updated and ready when the ambulance reached the hospital.
"You never could have done that with a payphone and a legacy EHR," he said.
One of the early users of Brightree's new EHR platform is the Natick (Mass.) Visiting Nurse Association.
“Brightree Home Health with point-of-care on the iPad gives us a distinct advantage," Wendy Cofran, the VNA's chief information officer, said in a press release. "Our clinicians have the information they need at their fingertips to deliver the best possible care to their patients without having a barrier between them. In fact, our patients appreciate being able to see the progress they’re making. The iPad creates a visual connection for patients to their individualized care plans, and it assists our staff with teaching and compliance.”
“It’s a game changer,” she said. “Not only are we seeing a reduction in the time required to document visits but a more thorough clinical documentation application, which is vital in an era of increasing regulatory requirements."
Lizerbram sees another trend making a play for mobile EHRs. In the future, he said, these platforms are going to be able to incorporate data from mobile devices, ranging from home-based monitoring equipment to consumer-facing health and wellness devices. That will make for a more complete medical record, he said.
It will also require EHR vendors to parse through all that data and separate what's important to the doctor from the chaff. Lizerbram says mobile platforms will have to incorporate analytics.
"You have to be prepared. The doctor doesn't want to be slowed down," Lizerbam said. "With mobile, you're already working in a fast-paced setting, adapting to (one's surroundings). This will just be an extension of that."
