How Handheld Computers Can Streamline and Improve Healthcare

As more hospitals adopt a mobile strategy, multipurpose tools are becoming an increasingly popular option. Workstations on wheels still serve a purpose in healthcare. The carts help clinicians tote around all of the devices and equipment they need and connect to systems at a patient’s bedside.

But they’re hardly as nimble or convenient as the current generation of clinical mobile computers that have a battery life that lasts for an entire shift, are built to withstand drops and can easily be sanitized.

Small yet mighty, these tools help ease workflows and improve communication among clinicians. And they can perform an array of critical functions that once required additional or cumbersome technologies to execute.

“Today’s caregivers are being asked to do more with less. How do you do that? You need to make some part of their jobs easier,” says John Barr, a consulting systems architect for Memorial Hermann Health System in southeast Texas, where the company’s stable of Honeywell Dolphin CT40 and CT50 models has grown to nearly 400. (He expects that number “to grow significantly, by fourfold to fivefold” in the near future.)

Although Memorial Hermann still deploys more than 6,500 workstations on wheels, response to the new computers has been positive, with users citing security and portability as perks. The equipment also supports a systemwide initiative to untether staff from stationary command posts and bulkier tools.

“I think nobody would argue that access to information on a mobile handheld device is easier than dragging around a computer on wheels,” Barr says.

That sentiment is growing: Ninety percent of healthcare organizations plan to implement (or are currently implementing) a mobile device initiative, a 2018 Jamf survey found. And 47 percent of respondents said they plan to increase mobile device usage by 2020.