Today's health care environment makes mobile computing increasingly attractive as a way to connect caregivers to clinical data and applications, anywhere and anytime. How soon and to what extent such applications might be integrated into standard practice is reviewed in Wireless and Mobile Computing, a study conducted by the First Consulting Group for the California HealthCare Foundation (CHCF).

The initial entry of mobile computing in health care brought reference tools that allowed clinicians easy access to guidelines, clinical and drug information, as well as limited formulary information. Today's applications now handle additional tasks such as basic forms of charge capture, prescription writing, clinical documentation, lab test management, and alert messaging/communication.

This report serves as a guide to health care professionals and managers who want to understand mobile computing and wireless technology concepts, the current opportunities in health care, and how they should approach decisions about adopting it. It provides a snapshot of the current marketplace and discussion of connectivity, performance, security, integration, and cost issues with a view towards future developments.

This is the first report to be released in a five-part series that CHCF has commissioned to address the potential impact of applications, which use the Internet and other communications technologies to improve care delivery. Read the Wireless and Mobile Computing report or watch the video clip .

"Internet technology is still fairly new and untested in health care," said Sam Karp, CHCF's chief information officer. "That makes experimentation, analysis and evaluation critically important." CHCF regularly conducts research and commissions surveys on emerging technology trends, related developments in health policy and regulatory issues that arise from the speed and magnitude of technological change."

The other reports in the five-part series to be released over the next few months will help define and explain each of several emerging concepts and applications being developed or used in conjunction with them:
 

• e-Encounters: New electronic methods for communication between patients and their providers that resemble care delivered today via the telephone or face-to-face encounters
• e-Prescriptions: Use of an automated data entry system to generate prescriptions, replacing the hand-written, paper versions
• e-Disease Management: New electronic tools that support a more coordinated and proactive approach to managing chronic illness by providing patients with improved communication, access to information and self-management tools

The reports have been researched and written for CHCF by the First Consulting Group, a leading provider of information-based consulting, integration, and management services to health care, pharmaceutical and other life sciences organizations in North America and Europe.

In addition, CHCF will release a report about the diffusion of Internet technologies in health care, prepared by the Institute for the Future, a nonprofit research firm specializing in long-term forecasting, alternative futures scenarios and the impacts of new products and next-generation technologies on society and business.

In its iHealthReports series, CHCF has previously addressed issues such as the privacy of personal health information online and offline,the quality of health information on the Internet, and the use of Application Service Providers (ASPs) in health care.

For more information please contact:
California HealthCare Foundation
Charles Stewart (510) 238-1040

dfs 10/31/01