Boston Children's app development effort proving its worth

BOSTON—While many existing websites and tools have been turned into mobile apps, they are just changing the delivery mechanism of existing tools and content, said Naomi Fried, PhD, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, speaking during the mHealth + Telehealth World Congress 2013.

Fried oversees efforts to develop mobile apps at Boston Children’s, which she says is the “perfect environment for mobile solutions.” She cited clinical complexity, the variety of clinical solutions a mobile app might need to connect to, privacy and security concerns and regulatory concerns as some of the barriers to the development of mobile apps, “but we think it’s worth trying to innovate and come up with new mobile apps for the environment.”  

Those apps include BEAPPER, designed to help Boston Children’s emergency department clinicians communicate more effectively and get test results back more quickly. “A three-month pilot showed we could get test results to physicians 28 percent faster.”

GPUTT (gastrointestinal procedural unit time tracker) is a digital solution to track patient flow which has proven to be an efficiency enhancer. Patients now move through the unit 12 percent faster, Fried said, and the app also helps with compliance and documentation. DisCo (discharge communication) “allows us to send texts to discharged patients and, based on their answers to a series of questions, we know which patients to follow up with. The hypothesis is that it can actually reduce our rate of unnecessary readmissions.”

Boston Children’s mobile app efforts extend to patients and their families too. MyWay is a wayfinding app. Since the hospital is comprised of 12 interconnected buildings and includes 15,000 rooms and three million square feet, “it’s easy to get lost,” she said. The app helps patients navigate the facility and provides information about local restaurants, location transportation and more. It already has been downloaded more than 700,000 times since last year’s launch, Fried said.

MyPassport helps admitted patients access and understand lab results; see the names, pictures and roles of each member of care teams; and provides a place to send questions to clinicians at any time. “We’re finishing up a pilot and early indications are that patients love it. They feel empowered. Nurses enjoy using it and they feel like they’re delivering better care.”

Fried said it’s exciting that these mobile apps support strategic initiatives at the hospital level, such as enhancing clinician efficiency and enhancing the family experience. There is so much interest and demand, however, that the app development team cannot keep up. She created a mobile apps working group that can teach and learn from each other. Each time they build, she said, they gain experience and get faster.

Fried said Boston Children’s sees a “big opportunity to streamline the patient’s experience before they walk in the door. We’re looking at ways to improve the efficiency of our phone system so they’re not on hold so long and don’t have to call multiple departments. On the clinical side, we’re world class, but there’s an opportunity to make the patient experience, the nonclinical aspect, more positive.”