For several years, hospitals have been facing a lack of caregivers, leading them to an increase in their mental load. Sure, here is the active voice version of your sentence: In the past few years, developers have created helping tools to support the health sector and improve its working conditions. Managed mobile devices, which can be taken anywhere, are one of these tools. Here is how they helped improve the hospital daily routine:
For the caregivers
Professionals cannot give digital tools to a team without securing them first. This is even more true in the healthcare sector where a data leakage could quickly turn into a critical situation.
In 2020, many American hospitals were attacked by ransomware, such as the UHS group, who managed 400 health institutes. For such a thing to happen, it only takes one staff member who – for example – downloads a malware application by mistake for the device to be infected. The virus then has access to all the sensitive information of the hospital, in particular confidential data, such as patients’ health info.
Providing caregivers with configured tablets for a specific use, enables them to focus more on the caregiver/patient relation than the administration management. Thanks to a tablet that is remotely configured to have access only to the professional softwares, the health worker can:
→ Have a dematerialized and uniform patient file management, no matter which service they work for
→ Have an instant access to a sick person data, in particular during a service shift
SaaS software manages remote management and updates in the cloud, saving time for both the mobile device administrator and the medical staff. Indeed, the ISD can quickly configure and update tablets, and the health team doesn’t waste time between patients, allowing them to focus on their health.
“TinyMDM allowed us to equip each volunteer with a secure, pre-configured Android tablet in order to complete study admin tasks and perform on-site troubleshooting. This dramatically reduced the effort and cost of setting up and maintaining a fleet of over 100 tablets, improving the experience for volunteers, schools and participants.“ According to the Black Dog Institute, an academic research project, based in Australia.
For the patients
For the patients, when they have a secured tablet, they see their daily routine improved. The health crisis is first of all, impacting patients. Indeed, visits are strongly reduced in some hospitals in the United States. That’s why since March 2019, some health institutes have received tablet gifts to improve the daily routine of hospitalized people. Moreover, rather than just sharing info about their hospital journey, investing in an Android tablet also enables patients to relax during their hospitalization, thanks to applications such as Netflix, Youtube, magazines or games available on the Playstore. Also, the configured device decreases the feeling of isolation. Since the 1st lockdown, video-conference applications have taken a lot of space and have been a real support to keep contact with loved-ones in health institutes.
TinyMDM allows you to create user sessions specifically for healthcare patients. Patients can open a temporary session, access their different accounts (Skype, WhatsApp, Netflix, etc.) on the tablet, and close the session when they are finished. All data saved during the session is automatically deleted.
It is important to supervise those tablets, to make sure that they stay on the site, but also to prevent inappropriate use and to have a global view of the mobile fleet. That is why many healthcare institutes invest in MDM solutions to be able to use those tools in a secure way.
At the hospital’s reception area
The use of tablets at the reception is increasing in hospitals. Many people enter and exit the establishment each day, which can overwhelm the staff. Setting up a managed tablet at the entrance may:
- Inform: on which floor is the pediatric/cardiology unit ?
- Secure: by scanning mandatory health passes
- Warn: waiting time in the emergency room
Thanks to a configured tablet, accessing the device’s settings or downloading unauthorized applications is impossible. Visitors can only use the device to get information or type in required information.
As the SID of a hospital, if you pre-install an MDM (mobile device management) software, it will enable you to have a feedback on all your institute tablets and create different profiles depending on the usage. As an IT administrator, the most important thing is to choose a Saas software. It must be centrally located and accessible from any kind of computer or smartphone. As an Android device manager inside a healthcare center, the most needed features to take into account are:
- Dashboard with all the devices’ information (pending updates, battery status…)
- Deployment of authorized applications only (avoiding the installation of malware applications)
- Possibility to configure devices according to services or users (patients or caregivers)
- Remote control sessions (to simplify the maintenance)
- Possibility to send messages in one click. Send an emergency pop-up to the entire hospital or only to some services.
21th of December 2021