Carestream Health plans to debut a mobile care module for its Clinical Collaboration Platform at HIMSS16 that will enable caregivers in emergency rooms, accident sites and other locations to connect to the imaging platform through a secure website and upload pictures to help with diagnosis and care.
Giving caregivers such as emergency nurses, emergency medical technicians and remote clinicians the ability to share mobile photos of patients’ wounds, skin conditions and other medical matters and have those photos instantly become part of patients’ EHRs will help improve healthcare and increase efficiency, said Cristine Kao, global marketing and growth operations director for healthcare IT solutions at Carestream Health.
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“Instead of creating a dedicated app, we developed a web browser-based solution,” Kao said. “The browser-based solution is all about access to the EMR, so when you have a Web-enabled module, you can embed it directly into any EMR, no separate app, no separate log-on. There’s a lot of benefit to having it completely Web-enabled.”
Kao cited two primary ways the mobile care module can be used by provider organizations. The first is wound care.
“Nurses triaging patients at the bedside and assessing a wound usually write down notes, but now they can take some photos from their tablets and quickly and easily upload those photos into the enterprise imaging platform so other caregivers can see the photos through the EMR,” Kao said. “And surgeons or doctors elsewhere can make treatment plans after seeing those images.”
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The other example Kao cited of how the mobile care module can be used to improve care and gain efficiencies is in trauma care.
“Paramedics at an accident site assessing whether an injury is a trauma case or standard care can use their tablets or smartphones to document clinical notes and upload photos, sending the photos securely to the emergency doctors at a hospital,” Kao said. “The hospital doctors can start treatment planning and visits prior to the patient arriving at the hospital. In these trauma care situations where a caregiver is at the point of a patient emergency, having photos become a part of the official patient record is quite valuable.”
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Kao also said the technology can be deployed in telehealth care setting.
“In other areas of the world where telemedicine is growing, access to specialists can be a privilege,” Kao said. “We have customers in China and Latin America, for instance, doing tele-dermatology clinics. With this module, patients can go to a remote location, and a caregiver there can take an image of, for instance, the back of a patient’s hand, and upload it to the imaging platform and EMR where a specialist elsewhere can make an assessment.”
