Despite all of the privacy concerns, mobile healthcare still appears to be the wave of the future. Smartphones and PDAs are being used more and more by physician's offices for everything from electronic medical record access to drug references. And many healthcare providers are being forced into using more mobile technology--for such things as prescriptions and charge capture--just to keep up with the competition.
"You have to be where the users are," Dr. Jason Bhan, a practicing family physician in Manassas, VA, and founder of Ozmosis, a social network for physicians said. "There has to be a roadmap in place for mobile."
Furthermore, the creation of the mHealthInitiative by CEO Peter Waegemann, which essentially has taken the place of the now-defunct Medical Records Institute, shows just how far things have come. Waegemann founded the Medical Records Institute in the mid-1980s, but his main focus heading into this past February's TEPR conference seemed to be the development of mobile healthcare technologies.
A product session with PatientKeeper CTO Bob Salitsky on Monday, April 6 at 11:15 a.m. will focus on the successful deployment of such applications in the healthcare society today. On Tuesday, April 7 at 11:15 a.m., Heather Dunn of Lumension Security and Rob Israel of the John C. Lincoln Health Network will discuss optimizing efficiency and keeping medical records safe through mobile technology.