Out-Law News 2 min. read
09 May 2013, 3:35 pm
Technology law specialist Alison Ross Eckford of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said that mobile-health (mHealth) solutions were likely to develop and be more widely adopted as technology improves and cost saving opportunities are identified.
mHealth is a broad term that refers to the practice of using mobile IT to deliver services in the health sector. The applications vary widely, from engaging in patient records management through tablet devices, to recording patients' heart rate, glucose or blood oxygen levels remotely through applications available on smartphones, to providing medical interventions and diagnostics.
"The mHealth revolution will transform how medical practitioners deliver services in the future," Ross Eckford said. "It forms part of the wider move within the NHS to mobile and how it makes use of technology to achieve higher quality care."
"One of the Department of Health's (DoH's) current key objectives is to promote technology to make services more convenient, accessible and efficient. A recent pilot within NHS England illustrated the savings that can be obtained from mHealth schemes."
The DoH conducted a 15 month mobile working pilot for community nurses based at a number of different NHS centres in England. The pilot involved community nurses using mobile devices to input data from patient home visits.
The results of the pilot were that the productivity of the nurses improved, nurses could spend more time with patients, the volume of journeys and travel time was reduced and that problems with "data duplication" was reduced by up to 92%. In addition, savings in relation to patient referrals and admissions were achieved.
"In times of intense pressure to deliver good care outcomes within increasingly tight budgets, the potential savings that have been proven to be achievable by the introduction of mobile working cannot be ignored," the Department of Health's National Mobile Health Worker Project: Final report (32-page / 192KB PDF) said.
Ross Eckford said, though, that health care bodies that take advantage of mHealth solutions must consider the data protection implications of doing so.
"The good news from the pilot is that mobile use actually improved data quality and security, in comparison to existing paper records. However, where mobile technology is used for recording, accessing or otherwise managing patient health data, this will almost always involve the processing of sensitive personal data about that individual," Ross Eckford said. "The Data Protection Act demands that organisations treat individuals' sensitive personal data with utmost privacy as this data attracts specific protection under the Act, and in addition, patient confidentiality must be maintained at all times. In effect this means that mobile devices used to store, access or transmit patient data must be secure and not capable of being accessed by unauthorised individuals."
"Data transmissions should also be encrypted and secure to prevent data being intercepted, and, in accordance with the Act, the information should only be processed for specified purposes, such as to input data about a patient onto a server containing their medical records or to send a patient a text reminder about hospital appointments," she added.
Ross Eckford was commenting after a US study revealed that doctors were each wasting 46 minutes a day on average waiting to receive patient information, according to a report by USA Today. Inefficient pagers, a lack of Wi-Fi connection, e-mail problems and a ban on personal devices were most commonly cited as causes of the delays, the report said. The study revealed that the loss of productivity cost typical US hospitals $900,000 each per year, and that further costs were incurred due to the use of existing communications channels relied on in the patient discharge process, it said.
