Tips to Enhance Mobile Connectivity for Hybrid Healthcare

The healthcare industry has long embraced hybrid care models, incorporating both virtual and in-person visits, but COVID prompted a greater push toward the use of mobile technology to care for patients remotely. That requires virtual visits for those who can’t physically come to the office or are so remote that virtual communication is the only option. 

But hybrid care models pose new challenges in healthcare, including logistical issues such as ways to get blood pressure cuffs on a telehealth patent’s arm and securely transmitting patent vital signs into electronic health records (EHRs).

Virtual healthcare, or telehealth, is here to stay, and healthcare organizations may struggle to ensure remote patients get proper care while adjusting to evolving technologies. Due to post-pandemic inflation, organizations must adhere to budgets that didn’t previously allow for cutting-edge equipment.

“You can’t hire topnotch [clinicians] and data scientists and give them outdated Wi-Fi and a flip phone. They’re going to expect to be handed the latest generation smartphone and super high-powered laptops to do their work wherever they feel like it,” said Robert Havasy, Senior Director, HIMSS Thought Advisory Group, and Managing Director, Personal Connected Health Alliance.

5G cellular technology can provide staff members and clinicians with the low-latency computing required to leverage wireless networks to implement innovative care delivery programs. These mobile solutions are easily accessible, even in rural areas, to serve the most remote patients.

In the new executive brief “Mobile Connectivity and the Future of Hybrid Healthcare,” UScellular^® and the non-profit Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) look at the challenges facing healthcare leaders and the mobile technology solutions such as 5G cellular that will position healthcare organizations to succeed for years to come.