– By Mai Torralba, vice president of product development, BioIQ –
Perhaps you have heard that mobile technology has been slow to infiltrate healthcare. Don’t believe it! According to Forbes, 83 percent of healthcare organizations already use mobile apps to improve patient care[1] and 90 percent of respondents in a HISS analytics research project said they use mobile devices for patient engagement. The FDA reports that it has to continually update its guidelines to accommodate a tremendous influx of mobile technologies.
BioIQ is on the crest of this rising wave—and just in time for the busy upcoming season of biometric screening and flu shots! To streamline these important wellness activities, BioIQ is pleased to introduce the first native Apple iOS and Google Android apps for automating corporate screening events, vaccination programs, and health fairs. Healthcare personnel can use tablets to set up nurse accounts, verify participant reservations, establish the eligibility of walk-ins, capture signatures on consent forms, enter biometric data, and display lab results—all in real time.
As my colleague Rachel Terry stated in a recent post, BioIQ puts individuals at the forefront of the healthcare experience, making it easy to get vaccinated, get screened, and view lab results in a manner most suited to each person’s needs.
A key differentiating feature of our tablet apps is an offline mode or “airplane mode” for healthcare providers who can’t access a wi-fi network or data network during a biometric screening or vaccination event. The app can gather the data during the event and then upload it later when they are connected to their wi-fi or data network. This option increases flexibility and provides significant operational savings for some of our partners. No more costly 4G or LTE data plans, and no need to manually input data from paper records kept during the event. If network access is not an issue, then you can utilize the online mode for real-time data management, data transfer, and results reporting.
As you get ready to launch a flu vaccination program or biometric screening program for your workforce, wouldn’t you prefer to offer a paperless option that allows people to obtain consents and view results on mobile tablets? We find that the majority of wellness participants do. That’s why we continue to enhance the BioIQ platform to maximize accessibility, with these powerful new mobile apps at the heart of our strategy. This mobile app is an important addition to our evolving SoftSuite Platform, which I will discuss further in a future post.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2014/07/17/83-of-healthcare-organizations-are-using-cloud-based-apps-today/