Boosting patient-centered care with integrated mobile devices

Estimated read time: 3 minutes

Key takeaways:

• Health care organizations are starting to recognize the need to consolidate their platforms for more efficient communication between nurses and physicians.

• Integrated mobile devices empower clinicians to streamline their workflows and spend more time with their patients.

• Nurses and physicians need to be involved in the implementation of clinical communication and collaboration strategies.

Improving clinical efficiency and coordinating care with integrated devices

Mobile devices allow clinicians to have data, intelligence and communications in the palm of their hands, making care delivery more effective and efficient. This technology empowers clinicians to streamline their workflows and spend more time with their patients. CareAware Connect^TM, Cerner’s clinical communication and collaboration solution, is unique because it’s a communication tool that’s also an extension of the EHR.

With the most important health data in the hands of all care team members, there’s more time to focus on what matters most — delivering better coordinated care to patients. For example, a physician can see the primary nurse assigned to their patient, who the primary care provider is and directly communicate with those care team members in near real-time through a single call or text. We’re giving clinicians a seamless and unified experience that integrates workflows and alarm management on one platform across mobile and desktop.

Facilitating seamless communication within health care organizations

There are some organizations that are still apprehensive about changing their approach to communication and diving into the world of smartphones, apps and artificial intelligence. Although it’s less frequent, we’re seeing organizations that want to pilot clinical communication solutions without realizing the full benefit of a system-wide rollout. This lowers the number of end-users and reduces collaboration across the organization, making it difficult to see the solution’s full effectiveness. Some organizations aren’t taking full advantage of all the communication, clinical workflow and alarm management tools that can make a clinician’s workday more efficient when combined on a single mobile device.

To ease the transition to a clinical communication and collaboration solution, organizations need to identify clinicians who will champion the project and identify the benefits. That’s a key to success. It’s not just an IT or telecom project. It’s about improving care team communication through coordinated care and, ultimately, delivering better patient outcomes. The physician, nursing and ancillary groups need to be involved in the design and the strategies, and these solutions should be rolled out house-wide for improvements in provider satisfaction and operations. 

Putting critical information in the hands of clinicians

One big area of focus for Cerner is putting the patient at the center of care team communications. We want nurses and physicians to be able to easily see patient-specific information. Providing access to a comprehensive care team across multiple solutions helps provide consistent data, while the ability to view contact information and directly communicate with the care team delivers a seamless experience. Our mission is to empower clinicians to communicate more effectively and have near real-time access to the data they need to provide the best care to patients.

I expect the industry to continue to focus on becoming more intelligent, using machine learning and big data to improve the overall patient and provider experience. We have an opportunity to use smartphones and other mobile devices to broaden the care team community, extend the health network community and leverage efficient communication to remove many of the boundaries and barriers that exist in health care today. 

Cerner’s integrated clinical communication and collaboration solution ensures the right information is intelligently routed to the right person at the right time, putting critical information in the hands of clinicians. Learn more here.