A continuing criticism of mHealth is that it's been too focused on doctors, leaving nurses to pick up the scraps or benefit from the occasional forward-thinking health system. But with concepts like care coordination and patient engagement sharing the spotlight lately, providers are starting to realize that the nurse might benefit from a few of those digital health innovations that doctors and consumers are enjoying.
"Nurses are really the eyes and ears and the heart of healthcare," says Pam Cipriano, president of the American Nurses Association, representing some 3.4 million nurses nationwide – about 80 percent of which, she estimates, are using smartphones at work.
The nursing profession will take center stage – literally – during the first day of the 2015 mHealth Summit, Nov. 8-11 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center outside Washington D.C. Cipriano is scheduled to lead things off at 9:30 a.m. Monday with a keynote titled "Nursing at Scale with Mobile and Connected Health." She'll be followed at 9:45 a.m. by Judy Murphy, RN, chief nursing officer and director of Healthcare Global Business Services for IBM, who intends to discuss "Mobilizing the Healthcare Workforce to Rise Above the Fragmentation."
[Learn more about the 2015 mHealth Summit.]
Both speakers say healthcare is starting to pay attention to nurses because they spend so much time with patients – be it in the doctor's office, in the hospital or clinic, or even at home.
"It starts with attitude adjustment," says Murphy, who's been spearheading IBM's aggressive development of a number of nurse-facing mobile apps. She says healthcare has been focused far too long on the EHR, and practically ignoring new technology that could make the electronic health record more – dare we say it – meaningful.
"I think we're lagging behind because it's complicated," she says. "We need to be proactive rather than reactive" to do a better job in communicating and collaborating with patients.
That means developing apps that aren't EHRs projected onto a smaller screen, Murphy says. An app – especially one that a nurse will use – has to do more than a website found on a PC at a nurse's station, or do it better to make the task easier and faster.
Cipriano says mobile devices are a necessity in healthcare now, not a luxury, "and there has to be somebody at the end of that data push-and-pull." That's the nurse. They're the ones who are often coordinating the care, communicating with patients, collecting information, carrying out assigned tasks and pushing relevant data to the doctor.
"mHealth augments the nurse's role in healthcare," says Murphy. "They've always been the advocates for the patient."
For more information about the mHealth Summit, visit the Connected Health Conference website.
