mHealth World Congress: Become a mHealth innovator to better patient care

BOSTON—Successful mHealth innovation projects start with an idea to enhance patient care, move from idea to development with clinician assistance and end with a practical tool that makes clinicians’ jobs easier. Children’s Hospital Boston Chief Innovation Officer Naomi Fried, PhD, and her co-panelists shared their tips for mhealth innovators on July 25 at the 4th annual mHealth World Congress.

“We do a lot of thinking about how we can leverage mobile technologies to facilitate work that clinicians do, as well as connect with patients,” Fried said.

The 394-bed pediatric medical center takes a three-pronged approach to health IT innovation: identify unmet opportunities, support grassroot efforts and institutionalize innovation. Children’s Hospital has an advantage over others in its own in-house development team, a rare presence in hospitals, but the presence indicates the organization's institutional commitment to innovation and its developers take their lead from clinical staff.

"We see a lot of innovation because our clinicians have ideas,” Fried said. “They’re on the frontline and they see what doesn’t work. Doctors and nurses recognize things that are not optimal and wonder how they can use technology to improve care delivery.”

To illustrate the innovative process at Children’s Hospital, Fried told the story of two clinicians who believed patients needed access to clear, easy-to-understand information about their providers and the facility. The idea was first implemented in physical form, but is now being digitized in the form of an app that patients’ can use to see their providers, access personal health information and ask questions of hospital staff.

“We wanted to enhance patient care, so we’re building an app to do that,” Fried said.

For those healthcare systems without an in-house development team, there are plenty of developers building apps with medical functionality. And for those building apps, there are plenty of healthcare systems without an in-house development team. Individuals from these separate spheres can form symbiotic relationships to create truly useful mHealth tools, but success relies on clinician involvement.

“When working with any size hospital, physician champions are the way,” said Ryan Panchadsaram, a customer and product manager for Ginger.io, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company that developed a behavior analytics mHealth app.

While Children’s Hospital has been able to successfully implement its own innovative products and Ginger.io’s app is finding a home in healthcare settings, there are also many unsuccessful innovation projects. “There are a lot of people out there building apps. Many get built to a point, and then disappear,” Panchadsasram said.