The HP ElitePad in Healthcare

One thing I often forget when thinking about mobile computing in healthcare is that it’s not just the smart phone. Certainly the smart phone is incredibly powerful and has a strong place in the future of mobile health. However, it has its limitations. Often you just need more screen real estate to do what you need to in healthcare. This is particularly true on the enterprise healthcare side of the world compared to the consumer side.

This is what makes the Windows 8 and iPad tablets such an important part of the mobile health ecosystem. In fact, I think these tablets could do more to transform healthcare than their smaller smart phone counterparts. In fact, these tablets are more powerful than your smart phone in every single way except size.

I was reminded of the power of these tablets when I got the chance to use the HP ElitePad. It was my first time to really dig into a Windows 8 tablet and I was really interested to see how well it performed.
HP ElitePad 900_Front Center
My intrigue in the Windows 8 tablets had been originally sparked by Fred Holsten, CIO of Intermountain, who told me that in their hospital they didn’t allow Android tablets, but they did allow Window 8 tablets. They had real security concerns with the Android tablets, but felt confident in the security of the Window 8 tablet. Plus, he even was fond of the way that the Windows 8 tablet handled application management.

With this in mind, I wanted to see how the HP ElitePad felt in my hand. From a pure hardware perspective, it was well designed and as comfortable as any other tablet of similar screen size. I also had the HP ElitePad expansion jacket. I had mixed feelings about the expansion jacket. The tablet felt pretty bulky with it on, but I also felt the jacket seemed to be a pretty good protection for the device. In the end, I usually leaned towards using it with the expansion jacket off. Either way, the tablet definitely passed the look and feel test.

When I first started actually using the ElitePad, I wasn’t sure I was going to like the interface. It took me a little while to get use to the separation of apps from the more standard windows interface. Plus, I had to get use to swiping the side to pull up the menu. After using it a little bit I really grew to like the interface. It balanced the touch interface applications with the ability to run any regular windows applications quite well.

I could see how this balance of applications could work really well in healthcare. Many healthcare applications won’t be ported over to become a native tablet application. At least they won’t be moved over in the near future. So, there’s a need for devices that can handle both native and legacy applications. The app store was a bit disappointing, but I think that will continue to change over time. Plus, when it wasn’t in the app store, I could find a regular windows application that worked fine. Not to mention most of what I needed was also available in a web browser.

I do wish that there were some native external keyboard options for the device, but a simple USB keyboard worked just fine and are available in every shape and size. I didn’t try using voice recognition on the device, but it has a nice microphone and would have likely worked well. However, sometimes I just like a nice keyboard for data entry. I did use the built in camera and microphone on a Google Plus hangout and that worked perfectly. You can easily see a telemedicine visit happening with this device.

Overall the device worked really well for me. My only real complaint with the device was the charger connection. The charger doesn’t really snap into the hole and so it’s hard to know if the charger is connected properly or not. Plus, the charger can bend back and forth in the charging hole. I often had to check to make sure that the device was indeed charging. It usually was plugged in just fine, but it would be much nicer if the charging plug kind of locked into place so you knew it was connected properly.

Overall, I can definitely see a place for a Windows 8 tablet like the HP ElitePad in healthcare. I think this is particularly true in the hospital and practice environment where they want to use their existing security software to manage their computing devices. However, with the built in camera and microphone, I can also see a number of telemedicine applications really liking this device as well.

This post is sponsored by HP Healthcare, however opinions on products and services expressed here are my own. Disclosure per FTC’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

Post a Comment(1)
August 12, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 6000 articles with John having written over 3000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 14 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: and and .

Filed Under: Healthcare IT  mHealth  Mobile Health Care  Tablets  Telemedicine
Tags:          

Is Your State Health Department’s App on Your Mobile?

I came upon this excited tweet from Geeta Nayyyar, MD, CMIO for AT&T, where she excitedly links to the announcement of the Alabama state health department mobile app.

I of course was interested to know what a state health department would include in an app. The linked article talks about it being used to disseminate public health info and share opportunities for public health workers to get continuing education. Do we really need an app for this?

I’m trying to imagine a public health worker getting excited to download their state health department’s application. I don’t think we’re going to be seeing it on the home page of people’s cell phone. It’s likely to be one of the many applications that gets downloaded and never used. If that’s the case, it makes me wonder why it was even created in the first place. I guess I’m interested to hear how much engagement they really get on the app.

What I do think is interesting is the possibility for using a mobile app to disseminate public health alerts. I could see many people opting in for that type of notification. Although, does that need an entire app? I like the idea of the government trying to use the latest technology, but it seems like there could have been better ways to accomplish their goals.

I guess I don’t see what’s so “awesome” about an app that likely won’t get much use.

Post a Comment(0)
August 9, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 6000 articles with John having written over 3000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 14 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: and and .

Filed Under: Healthcare IT  Medical Devices  mHealth  Smart Phones
Tags:        

New mHealth Journal – The Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine

Ever since I attended the mHealth Summit last year, I’ve been mulling over something I heard a speaker say about medical research methods. Certainly this is the cliff notes version, but they essentially said, “We need better research methods that work faster so that we can deliver results before the technology changes again and the results are invalid.”

I think this is a powerful concept and something I haven’t seen any companies really tackle. The medical establishment has its research methods and it’s going to be hard to get them to have them adapt for things like mHealth technology. Although, I do like some of the things that are happening with collaborative and open source style of research methods.

With that said, I was intrigued by a message I got from a Dr. Chandrashan Perera about a new medical journal focused on mobile healht. The internationally peer reviewed open-access medical journal is called: The Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine. They publish both original research articles, and perspective pieces. Issues are published on a quarterly basis, and are available freely online. To keep the journal bias free, they do not have any advertising, and they do not make a profit.

They have recently published Volume 2, Issue 2, so you can take a look at their initial work. I hope that they’ll continue to evolve their publishing methods and review methods as the mHealth landscape evolves. It’s certainly a challenge, but one that we need to accomplish.

Post a Comment(0)
August 8, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 6000 articles with John having written over 3000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 14 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: and and .

Filed Under: Healthcare IT  mHealth  Mobile Health Care
Tags:Dr. Chandrashan Perera  mHealth Medical Journal  Mobile Health Medical Journal  The Journal of Mobile Technology in Medicine

Categories of Mobile Health Apps

As I’ve been covering the mobile health space for the past couple years, I think a number of categories are starting to emerge. I might be missing some, but these seem to be some of the most popular category of mobile health applications. In some cases applications can fit into multiple categories. Although, I think these mobile health categories are a good way to think about the mobile health market.

Educate and Inform – There are a lot of mobile health applications that just work to educate or inform patients. In some cases this is just through static information that can be easily searched. In other cases it is through actual communication with a person who can respond in real time, or more often in an asynchronous way.

Information Reference – In some ways this is a subcategory of the Educate and Inform category. However, I make it separate because I see this as a much higher level reference for clinicians. This isn’t usually about a doctor trying to learn about something as much as it is about a doctor looking up something they basically already knew, but didn’t remember the exact details. Epocrates has been the obvious leader in this space, but I think we’re going to see a bunch of specialty specific reference applications in the mobile health space as well.

Remind and Alert – There are a whole series of mobile health applications around reminding and alerting patients. Some of these aren’t even technically mobile applications, but instead are built on the back of SMS messages. It’s really amazing the power of a proper reminder or alert sent at the right time.

Collect Data – Many of the reminder and alert applications also help to collect data from the patient. Often the reminder or alert is a notice to have the patient input some form of data. However, there are also a whole series of other mobile health applications that are built around collecting health data. Many of these applications are tied to an external device which collects some data and then uses the smart phone to collect and transmit the data that was collected.

Communication – It should seem obvious that a “phone” would be used as a means of communication. We don’t see mHealth communication happening as much with patients yet because there’s no solid reimbursement model for the communication. However, this will change over time and a few pioneering institutions are doing it whether there’s a reimbursement model or not. One of the strongest mobile health communication opportunities is secure text message between clinical staff. In the next year or two, I expect every doctor will have a way to securely text message their office staff and other providers.

Enterprise Apps – These are the mobile health apps that provide access to other enterprise applications that are most often used from desktop computers, laptops, COWs, or other office computer. The most common of these are the mobile EHR applications. Although, no doubt there are plenty of others that will come out for labs, pharmacy, radiology, etc.

Finding Care – Quite a few mobile health applications are around trying to find a doctor, ER, or other medical establishment. Basically they’re a big database of healthcare providers, hospitals, clinics, etc and they use a variety of methods to sort and filter those organizations for the patient.

Diagnose – I see this category as the holy grail of mobile health applications. I’m not sure there are any mobile health applications today that fit this category, but they will come. In most cases I expect these applications will use many of the above categories to diagnose a patient. Whether it’s collecting data which can then be turned into a diagnosis, or whether the application can communicate data to someone who will produce a diagnosis. This is a powerful concept. In some cases this also will take the mobile health application and make it a medical device which has to be FDA cleared. The challenge is that there’s a huge barrier to entry to create a mobile health application that diagnoses. The beautiful part is that once you crack that barrier, it will be hard for your competitors to crack that barrier.

Ok, what other mobile health categories do you see? Would you divide some of the above categories even more? Are there new categories of mobile health applications that will be created as new technology arises?

Post a Comment(1)
August 6, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 6000 articles with John having written over 3000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 14 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: and and .

Filed Under: Health Care  Healthcare IT  Medical Devices  mHealth  Mobile Health Care
Tags:    

Bangladesh Mobile Health Service, Aponjon, Attracts 100,000 Users

A Bangladesh voice based service that provides health information to pregnant women and new mothers just hit 100,000 subscribers in July. The service is called Aponjon (meaning “Trusted One) was launched in 2011. Here’s a short description of the service:

The aim of Aponjon is to dispel commonly held misconceptions about child birth, while informing mothers of genuine health dangers and warning signs. The service also offers guidance to local healthcare services and explains the benefits of family planning.

This type of service immediately brings to mine the popular Text 4 Baby service in the US. One major challenge with the Text4Baby initiative is that you have to be able to read. That’s not a great solution in areas with a low level of literacy. Aponjon solves this problem by providing their messages as a voice based service.

I love seeing the power of mHealth internationally. In fact, I think the greater mobile health opportunity might be outside of the US than inside the US. Plus, there are often far fewer health regulations in these countries. Comparing it to the Wild West is not a stretch.

Post a Comment(0)
August 5, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 6000 articles with John having written over 3000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 14 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: and and .

Filed Under: Health Care  Healthcare IT  mHealth  Mobile Health Care
Tags:Aponjon  Bangladesh  mHealth International  Mobile Health International  Text 4 Baby

The Future of Health Care: Empty Hospitals – Catchy Title

This was the title of an article on Money Talks News: The Future of Health Care: Empty Hospitals? Certainly it’s a fantastic title, but is so far from the reality. If anything, it should say: The Future of Health Care: Empty Doctors Offices. When I think about all of the work that’s done in hospitals, it’s hard to imagine most of the work done there to happen outside of a hospital. Most hospital patients are there for a reason.

The same can’t be said for doctors offices. There is a good percentage of visits to a doctor’s office that could be done virtually. Certainly it’s no where near 100% of in person visits to the doctor that can be replaced, but it’s a much larger percentage than hospitals.

The ED is one area of the hospital that could be changed dramatically by telemedicine and other virtual office visits. Even then, it won’t leave the ED empty, but it could change how an ED is operated. In fact, we’re already seeing this today. I loved to hear about how the was used in EDs to do virtual visits with ED doctors at other hospitals. That’s a powerful concept.

Of course, Dr. Nick’s right that technology can prevent a lot of visits to the doctor. However, doctors and hospitals won’t have to worry about empty offices and hospitals anytime soon.

Post a Comment(0)
August 2, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 6000 articles with John having written over 3000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 14 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: and and .

Filed Under: Health Care  Healthcare IT  mHealth  Mobile Health Care  Telemedicine
Tags:      

A Tablet is Less Expensive Than a Re-hospitalization

Of course the idea of giving out a tablet to every patient is ridiculous. Plus, there’s no need to give it to everyone since many of them have one already. However, many have often said that it’s ridiculous to give a tablet device to a patient. It’s just too cost prohibitive.

Certainly there are many situations where handing a patient a tablet isn’t warranted. However, we’re going to see a growing number of cases where the use of technology on a tablet can reduce re-hospitalizations. Think about the minimum cost of a hospitalization against the cost of a $250-$500 tablet. Doesn’t feel quite as expensive when you start comparing the prices.

The real challenge we face is providing applications on that tablet that produce the desired result (ie. reduced re-hospitalizations). We still have a ways to go on this.

I recently heard that Jaguar no longer gives out paper owners manuals with their cars, but instead provides the owners manual on a tablet. Of course, Jaguar does it because of the mystique of giving their customer a tablet. I don’t think we’ll only look to the high end Jaguar type hospitals to start handing out tablets. I could see tablets being handed to patients across broad sections of healthcare.

Post a Comment(2)
August 1, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 6000 articles with John having written over 3000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 14 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: and and .

Filed Under: Health Care  Healthcare IT  mHealth  Mobile Health Care
Tags:Healthcare Tablet  Jaguar  Reduced Rehospitalizations


  • Previous