UPMC Kicks Off Mobility Program

If you’re going to look at how physicians use health IT in hospitals, it doesn’t hurt to go to doctors at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a $10 billion collosus with a history of HIT innovation. UPMC spans 21 hospitals and employs more than 3,500 physicians, and it’s smack in the middle of a mobile rollout.

Recently, Intel Health & Life Sciences blogger Ben Wilson reached to three UPMC doctors responsible for substantial health IT work, including Dr. Rasu Shrestha, Vice President of Medical Information for all of UPMC, Dr. Oscar Marroquin, a cardiologist responsible for clinical analytics and new care model initiatives, and Dr. Shivdev Rao, an academic cardiologist.

We don’t have space to recap all of the stuff Wilson captured in his interview, but here’s a few ideas worth taking away from the doctors’ responses:

Healthcare organizations are “data rich and information poor”: UPMC, for its part, has 5.4 petabytes of data on hand, and that store of data is doubling every 18 months. According to Dr. Shrestha, hospitals must find ways to find patterns and condense data in a useful, intelligent, actionable manner, such as figuring out whether there are specific times you must alert clinicians, and determine whether there are specific sensors tracking to specific types of metrics that are important from a HIM perspective.

Mobility has had a positive impact on patient care:  These doctors are enthusiastic about the benefits of mobility.  Dr. Marroquin notes that not only do mobile devices put patient care information at his finger tips and allow for intelligent solutions, it also allows him to share information with patients, making it easier to explain why he’s doing a give test or treatment.

BYOD can work if sensitive information is protected:  UPMC has been supporting varied mobile devices that physicians bring into its facilities, but has struggled with security and access. Dr. Shrestha notes that he and his colleagues have been very careful to evaluate all of the devices and different operating systems, making sure data doesn’t reside on a mobile device without some form of security.

On the self-promotion front, Wilson asks the doctors about a pilot  project (an Intel and Microsoft effort dubbed Convergence) in which clinicians use Surface tablets powered by Windows 8. Given that this is an Intel blog, you won’t be surprised to read that Dr. Shrestha is quite happy with the Surface tablet, particularly the form factor which allows doctors to flip the screen over and actually show patients trends.

Regardless, it’s interesting to hear from doctors who are gradually changing how they practice due to mobile tech. Clearly, UPMC has solved neither its big data problems nor phone/tablet security issues completely, but it seems that its management is deeply engaged in addressing these issues.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see how far Convergence gets. Right now, Convergence just involves giving heart doctors at UPMC’s Presbyterian Hospital a couple dozen Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablets, but HIT leaders plan to eventually roll out 2,000 of the tablets.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

   

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