Health IT Summit: Innovation in mobile apps in the hospital setting

CAMBRIDGE, MASS.--“Hospitals are the perfect environment for mobile app solutions,” Naomi Fried, PhD, CIO, Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) said in the keynote speech at the Institute of Health Technology Transformation’s Boston Health IT Summit on May 8.

 “There is a tidal wave of mobile apps being created,” she said, adding that the mobile app industry is estimated to mushroom to $4.4 billion by 2015. Fried said 30 percent of mobile apps are health-related.

However, despite these numbers, Fried reported a dearth of novel mobile apps for the hospital inpatient setting. Complex health IT systems that incorporate EHRs, online laboratory testing, pharmacology management, computerized physician order entry, billing and registration often are difficult for developers to access, she said.

To enable more innovation, BCH decided to become its own incubator of cutting-edge health apps. Its program—the FastTrack Innovation in Technology (FIT) award—has enabled hospital staff to work on developing prototypes of new apps with assistance from a FIT team of software developers and innovators.

The first three rounds of the BCH program involved 75 apps from physicians, nurses, pharmacists, IT staff and administrators in 19 departments. Some new apps that emerged from the program include:

• ALICE, a digital white board that keeps tracks of bed status and room assignments, assigned clinical care teams and their contact information and early warning scores to assess the risk of cardiac or respiratory arrest. The app is fully deployed at enterprise level.
• GPUTT, a time tracker for BCH's Gastroenterology Procedure Unit that keeps track of patients; it has made the unit 12 percent more efficient, Fried said.
• BEAPPER, an app used in the Emergency Department that centralizes data on why a patient is at the hospital, which providers are taking care of them, which medication orders have been placed and when a bed is ready.  
• DisCo, a discharge communications software that texts patients and determine which ones require follow up.
• MyWay, an app that helps patients navigate through the hospital, make appointments, and provides information on public transportation and the local neighborhood.
• MyPassport, which allows access to lab results in real-time and a place for patients and their families to learn about all members of their care team and care plan, with an added ability to contact clinical staff directly,

Fried said the successes of the apps have prompted BCH to explore commercializing the products beyond their walls. “We’re very much on a roadmap to get these out and in the hands of other people,” she said.

Speaking to the access challenge, she said the hospital is looking at having locked down iPads for patients’ use during their stay.