While documented resources will always account for a significant part of the information flow in healthcare, growing evidence indicates that information requests by clinicians will be met more often by their colleagues via mobile synchronous and asynchronous communications.
As part of our “Countdown to HIMSS’16” series, we spoke with Jason Stanaland, Mobility Solutions Consultant, Spok (HIMSS’16 booth #4829). He described Spok’s approach to establishing effective clinical communication systems and how the company’s experience across multiple vertical markets provides special insights that are particularly important in healthcare.
Some of the subjects we discussed included:
- the historical and contemporary challenges surrounding clinical communications;
- the need to secure communications for both the organization and the end user;
- how communication gaps between patients/consumers and providers/marketplace are eroding;
- the potential of Big Data’s impacts on the future of clinical communications.
(Editor’s note: To hear audio excerpts of this interview, click on the media player buttons that run throughout this article.)
I. Background
Stanaland talks about how his career kicked off at Emory University, where he helped to implement Spok solutions at the school.
II. The benefits of Spok’s experience across multiple verticals
Stanaland talks about the challenges of working with customers across many fields. He speaks to how operating within various challenging environments drives Spok to constantly improve their solutions.
III. Most common communication challenges in healthcare
Stanaland talks about the special challenges of security, interoperability and disaster recovery that exist within the healthcare industry.
IV. Secure communications for the organization and the end-user
Stanaland then states how “paging is a perception.” He goes on to describe how Spok enables BYOD, across many verticals, by effectively leveraging technology in a secure fashion protecting both the organization and the end-user.
V. Creating a solid foundation for effective clinical communications
Stanaland talks about the capabilities and benefits of Spok Mobile. He describes a Spok device-preference engine that provides escalation capabilities for high priority communications. He goes on to outline how Spok’s workflow management infrastructure enables its clients to send “the right information to the right person at the right time.”
VI. Bridge the gaps
Stanaland details how emerging communication technologies might effectively bridge the gap between the ever-changing consumer-health and healthcare-medical worlds.
VII. The common need for security and standards
Stanaland talks about the challenges that come with security and standards. He calls on healthcare vendors and providers to come together to meet these challenges and to engage in the important conversations that are not occurring today.
VIII. NBT
Stanaland answers the question: “What is the next big thing?” He describes how social media might soon create secure, patient-centric feeds of information across the entire healthcare continuum. The Internet of Things in healthcare, according to Stanaland, will also flourish in the coming years.
IX. How Big Data will make clinical communications more proactive
Stanaland envisions the use of Big Data to enable clinical communications to be more proactive than reactive especially around adverse events. Alerts or “triggers” for action, says Stanaland, will be created automatically by analytic tools linked to an organization’s communication platform.