Addressing Current Challenges Facing the Adoption of mhealth Technology

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1 Mobile Healthcare e-book Part 2 Addressing Current Challenges Facing the Adoption of mhealth Technology Find out the challenges industry leaders face when using mhealth and how they re working to overcome barriers Featuring Speakers From: Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation

2 Gordon Malik, ehomcare Lead, South West CCAC, London, ON All healthcare systems are comprised of multiple stakeholders with diverse objectives that are not always aligned. Fully understanding the primary stakeholder is critical, but so is understanding the technology and process interdependencies of other stakeholders. It s critical to have a strategic and continuous communications and engagement plan for all stakeholders one that proves the team has done its homework, but is still open to input and advice. Clinicians rarely have time for lengthy discussions and engaging them is a perennial challenge. Often there is only a very small window: use it to concisely demonstrate how a new initiative improves patient care and how it makes the provider s work easier. Dr. Joshua Tepper, President and Chief Executive Officer, Health Quality Ontario 1) Focus on the technology not the service and how it improves quality. 2) Security of Personal Health Information.

3 Trina Diner, Manager, Palliative Care and Telemedicine, Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre Finding Clinician Champions and also... inertia You must sell how your idea will help all of the players involved. Most importantly, patients and clinicians, but also organizations you impact. While the system savings might make sense, in order to sell the idea it has to make business sense as well and not put organizations at risk. Many people have many fantastic ideas. It s important to find solutions and focus energies where partners will work together and where the largest impact will be made. Change Management People don t like change. However, people love trying new things and mastering challenges. It is important to have experts support mid level and front line staff who are trying to learn, to show them what is possible and to enable learning to take place. Linking how people work in their own lives with technology and relating their own experiences and why the change is important, are necessary. Celebrating success is critical. Dr. Tony D Souza, Pediatrician, London Pediatric Clinic 1) Social media is the biggest challenge. It has created an atmosphere of immediacy, which no physician should be able to serve without compromising the rest of their practice. 2) Limited communication capacity is inconsistent with expectations. You are relying on reporters, who may not have the language skills to effectively communicate in writing or even verbally and cannot be supported by readily available objective measures.

4 Emily Seto, PhD, PEng, Assistant Professor, IHPME, University of Toronto, Affiliated Researcher, Centre for Global ehealth Innovation, UHM, Affiliated Faculty, Techna Institute, UHN/UofT A key challenge is the lack of sustained funding models for mhealth implementations. The most appropriate funding methods may differ depending on the mhealth innovation and application, which may range from consumer to public funding. For those involving public funding, policy reform would likely be required. Another key challenge is the alignment of incentives to adopt mhealth. For example, fee for service models of healthcare often do not facilitate adoption of new methods of healthcare delivery through mhealth innovations because there may be no mechanism to reimburse for clinical work, and/or improvements in health outcomes may not directly benefit the healthcare institution financially. Ideally, all relevant stakeholders including decision-makers, policy-makers, researchers, healthcare providers, and patient representatives should collaborate to further the agenda of policy reform for mhealth adoption. Sivan Keren Young, Manager, Digital Communications, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre A lack of digital literacy can be a challenge in adopting effective mobile health strategies. Some mobile health endeavours can also be incredibly expensive. Both of these challenges can be overcome, to some extent, through creativity and excellent strategic digital leadership. Organizations that invest in strategy before tactics can find ways to bring great ideas and initiatives to fruition; digital leaders can help mould a culture of digital education and engagement that can help digital newcomers navigate and leverage the mobile health space.

5 Dr. Parminder Singh MD, Medical Director, HealthCare Plus Medical Centre The biggest challenge in adopting mhealth is for the key stakeholders, such as the government and healthcare providers, and their ability to accept the inevitable change. Secondly, to ensure sensitive patient information is secure and accessible in a timely manner. The management of incentives to ensure mhealth is adopted would assist in the implementation of mhealth. If healthcare providers funding models are tweaked to ensure the adoption of mhealth, we may see an increase in the success of mhealth implementation. Joanne Maxwell, MSc, BScOT, BSc, PMP, Project Manager, Clinical Adoption, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital One challenge is user-capacity or user-readiness. Whether the mhealth being considered is a consumer product or a healthcare provider tool, there is great variation in the comfort levels of users. Some of this variation can be overcome through training and provision of resources and support, but choosing the right product is probably the most essential. Human nature is often to choose the product with all the bells and whistles, when in reality a simple, easy to use interface is probably the biggest factor in driving use. A second challenge I see is the growing desire for consumers to contribute to their health record in some way this could be through wearable device data, or through journal applications. The potential for this information to support care is wonderful, but the accessibility of this data is likely to arrive before the health system is ready to use it. Many health care consumers are eager to be more engaged and the system needs to be prepared.

6 Pierre Boulanger, Professor and CISCO Chair in Healthcare, Director of Advances Man-Machine Interface Laboratory, University of Alberta To my viewpoint there are two challenges that mhealth systems must solve before being used routinely. First, these systems must be compatible with the healthcare system (either private or public), which means that patient s information stored in mhealth repositories must be compatible with institutional EMR systems. HL7 has helped to solve some of these technical challenges, but unfortunately the healthcare authorities have been very slow at testing these connections. The second challenge is institutional, as healthcare authorities have to recognize the need for such systems and allow billing for the use of these systems. There have been many private pilot projects to test the concepts of mhealth but very few have been integrated with mainstream EMR systems connecting measured patient information to their medical records and more importantly, paying for the medical act of measuring and remote diagnostics. This is truly the key to the future of mhealth. Stephen Cobb, Senior Security Researcher, ESET North America Privacy and security of data are two related challenges for mhealth that can impact adoption. There s no point in a healthcare system deciding to adopt mhealth if patients decide not to participate because they fear their participation will expose their personal health data to inappropriate or unauthorized access. Long-term success is best assured using the principles of privacy by design and security by design, so that appropriate privacy assurances can be made when enrolling participants, assurances that are backed by sound security practices.

7 Dr. Charanjit Bambra, Professor and Biomed Program Coordinator, Centennial College Two key mhealth and suggestions for overcoming this include: Protecting privacy and security of personal health information. The availability of data on mobile platforms raises many security issues one way is via loss of mobile device and reliable methods for disabling these and encrypting data being developed. Integration of mobile technologies with third party health care devices/equipment. One possible solution is to develop smart devices that will allow automatic secure transfer of data on mobile healthcare devices. Nancy Snobelen, MBA, S-LP(C), Reg CASLPO, Director Partnerships & System Integration, Chatham-Kent Health Alliance Clinician engagement financially disadvantaged when attending meetings or training, etc. Awareness of immediate efficiencies many solutions are initially more time consuming, better in the long run. Dr. Raj Bhatla, MD, FRPC, DABN, Psychiatrist-in-Chief & Chief of Staff, The Royal Ottawa Health Care Group Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry University of Ottawa A key challenges is the willingness of patients, families, and clinicians to try something different. The best way to overcome this challenge is to clearly link improved technology to improved care.

8 Guest Contributions: Mary Lou Ackerman, Vice President Business Development, Saint Elizabeth Health Care mhealth is a broad term used to capture many solutions under the healthcare umbrella. This in itself can create a challenge. Over the past 10 years there has been an enormous adoption of mobile devices, which has led to a groundswell of development in the mhealth solution arena focused both on provider or consumer solutions. Many of these add some value and convenience for individuals or organizations, however the real tipping point will come with a coordinated effort that creates synergies between providers (organizations) and consumers (individuals). Dr. Yaariv Khaykin, Clinical Electrophysiology Staff Cardiologist, Southlake Regional Health Centre Lack of application and vendor certification process. Needs to be better established. Ability of mhealth solutions vendors to access enterprise data. While some solutions may be very helpful and incredibly innovative most suffer from lack of direct secure access to real-life clinical data thereby limiting their clinical utility. We need to make sure that we avoid development of siloed island applications.

9 ENHANCE PATIENT CARE AND OUTCOMES Learn more about providing better care for your patients and reducing costs by using mhealth technology at the 12th Annual Summit on Mobile Healthcare January 26th - 27th, 2016 Old Mill Toronto Proven Case Studies on: Patient-centred Care Mobile Apps Security & Privacy Wearable Devices Research & Innovations Connected Systems Patient Communications Download your complimentary copy of the Full Agenda today: Download Brochure»

10 Stay Tuned for e-book Part 3: Expert Steps For Adopting mhealth into Healthcare Coming Soon!