Not all mHealth solutions are designed for healthcare providers or their patients.
As witnessed at the 2013 HIMSS Conference and Exhibition, some products assist the people behind the scenes – the IT folks who keep the hospitals and clinics running smoothly. One such product is Orion Health's Rhapsody Mobile, a platform unveiled at HIMSS13 by the New Zealand-based eHealth vendor that enables IT departments to remotely monitor their connected network through Android and iOS smartphones.
"This is data in your pocket" for anyone involved in operations or maintenance, said Matt Court of Orion's Santa Monica, Calif.-based North American business unit. "This puts the user right into the middle of any issue."
Through its Rhapsody health information exchange and integration products, Orion Health services clients in more than 30 countries and several large networks and HIEs in the United States. Court said the addition of mobile capabilities to their platform enables provider networks to quickly identify IT problems before they become full-blown issues that affect the delivery of patient care.
Among the beta testers for Rhapsody Mobile is the Sparrow Health System in Lansing, Mich.
“This application will provide our interface analysts with a quick, convenient means of identifying and addressing data exchange problems as soon as they occur, greatly speeding time-to-resolution and supporting the clinical communications that are necessary for delivering high-quality patient care," said Sulabh Srivastava, the system's chief technology officer, in a press release issued by Orion Health. "By enabling us to monitor our connected IT environment from any location and immediately respond to issues, Rhapsody Mobile will enhance clinician satisfaction and help us drive improvements in operational efficiency.”
Court sees Rhapsody Mobile being especially helpful in IT environments where alerts are often sent out. The system stratifies alerts, he said, allowing users to quickly decide whether to pursue immediate action or wait until a more convenient time, and also pushes across updates of alerts for continual monitoring.
Orion Health is one of a number of vendors – including Logicalis, VMware, Oracle and SAP, to name just a few – to recognize the value of mobility in IT environments. Increased efficiency at the back end of operations means a smooth and uninterrupted flow of data out front, between the patient and the caregiver or the caregiver and the electronic medical record.
“Rhapsody Mobile marks another step in Orion Health’s efforts to provide our hospital, health system and public health customers with extensible IT solutions that drive improvements in care delivery and organizational efficiency,” said Paul Viskovich, president of Orion Health North America, in the press release. “Rhapsody Mobile affords our customers a quick and easy way to monitor their application interfaces and respond to issues as soon as they arise, anytime and anywhere.”
