I just returned from my 3rd HIMSS conference and lucky for me, it was on home field turf in Atlanta. For the uninitiated, HiMSS stands for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society. Think of it as a massive trade show relating to all things technology and healthcare.

Last year, I wrote about the growing trend of healthcare and mobility blog post: http://www.navara.com/blog/healthcare-and-mobility  and I’m happy to see that more vendors are realizing the market potential for mobile solutions. Not too long ago, I would commonly hear companies question the value of mobility, but those doubts are long gone. Today, the biggest concerns are which platforms to support and how to create a compelling mobile application that meets the needs of its users.

Ten years ago, the mobile device landscape was much simpler. You either were in the Palm or Pocket PC camp. Blackberry was just coming into the scene and other devices such as Psion and Sharp’s Zaurus had already seen their heyday. Today, the mobile device market is much more diverse with Blackberry, Windows Mobile, iPhone, Android and to a lesser extent, Symbian. Let’s not forget the burgeoning tablet, netbook, iPad market.

If you were an ISV (ten years ago) your choices were very simple, you developed your mobile application for Palm and/or Windows Mobile. Today, most organizations are too resource constrained to develop for each commercially available platform. What’s a software developer to do?

Enter Mobile Process Enablement. If you’re scratching your head, saying huh? I’ll explain.  MPE is the acronym for middleware solutions that allow for the rapid development of mobile applications that tie into existing databases.  In other words, they provide a quick way to develop a mobile app that is an extension of a desktop or cloud application.

The rational for leveraging an MPE solution is that with minimal development resources a developer can offer their application onto a variety of mobile devices without having to worry about building proprietary applications that must be constantly maintained and supported. Oftentimes, a mobile middleware platform can save about 90% of the development and support costs.

Did that get your attention?

SAP.  No three letters command such a wide range of emotion in the enterprise.  Well, in the late 90’s perhaps CRM came close.  Large-scale enterprise-wide systems are incredibly complex.  It’s a major investment not only financially but emotionally.  For those who have lived through an SAP implementation, the aftermath is varied:  Some are delighted, some frustrated, and everyone can agree that it’s a long, long road.

As far as installations go, SAP may be one of the most costly and complex systems in the world.  Multi-year installations are common.  SAP is so complex that many consulting businesses focus exclusively on the system.  Teams of dozens of engineers and analysts working around the clock and around the globe provide customization and integration services while project managers attempt to keep their schedules on track.  As with any long-term systems project, extensions are also common – and therefore frustration and confusion are common as well.

The roller coaster ride of emotions is understandable.  SAP often replaces many home-grown systems and affects the very heart of every business that adopts it.  Often a complete overhaul of the core systems that control every unique aspect of a business are collaborated into one system for the whole of the business. This big of a change does not come without stress for those who will use it.

Specialized Solutions

With such a wide range of customizations available, SAP can be considered a blank canvas.  This is fantastic for allowing a customer the ability to design their dream-system; and a nightmare for those who could use a little suggestion.  Of course, infinite customization takes (infinite) time and money – and when some specific system needs are identified, it can take an extremely long time and a large amount of resources to implement them.  For some businesses, searching for a third-party to provide additional specialized functionality has proven to be a great decision.

Both the strength and the weakness of wide-scope systems like SAP is in its flexibility and complexity.  Wide-scope systems are so flexible that they introduce a high level of complexity.  Enter third-party solutions which provide very specialized functionality, such as Mobility in a relatively simple product.  These solutions focus on a much more narrow set of functionality and work in conjunction with many different types of large-scale systems such as SAP.  Because they are so narrow in focus, these specialized solutions can provide increased functional and technical capabilities without increased complexity.  Over the course of the systems life cycle, the benefits of using a specialized solution increase even more as change control and enhancements are much easier and quicker to implement than with a more complex wide-scale system. The flexibility: complexity relationship changes dramatically and the customer gets the best of both worlds – a capable solution that is quick to implement and change.

Increased Functionality without Complexity

By using third-party products for specialized functionality, suddenly we don’t need teams of dozens of people.  We don’t need years to develop and implement.  By focusing on one specific functional need, specialized third-party solutions eliminate much of the complexity that would be required to configure a wide-scale system to perform the same tasks.  The resources required to use a specialized product are drastically reduced which translates into a quicker and greater ROI, and much less stress for everyone.

My Mobile Work Order will bring your office into the 21st century. Powered by Navara, the leader in mobilized workflow solutions, it is now possible eliminate paper work orders by having them delivered electronically to your employees on their PDA or Smartphone*.
 
It couldn’t be easier. Your work orders are created at the My Mobile Work Order website and transmitted wirelessly to your employees where they are completed on their mobile device. You simply check the website for the status of the work orders. No expensive back-office system, no paper trail, no hassles. It’s that easy! See how it works:

Navara's stand on 60+ tradeshow

This trade show is aimed at people in care for the elderly people. All kinds of companies working in that area are exhibiting on the show:  from Miele Professional to Industrial Clothing.  It is amazing to observe that the attandance of the IT companies was very law.  IT solutions, like the portable EMR, Ambulance Solutions and many others are a necessity for each organization in the industry to save time on administrative processes and focus on care.

The visitors of EXPO60+ are foremost interested in finding new possibilities and benefits for the healthcare sector.

For more information about mobility solutions in healthcare visit www.navara.com

De bezoekers zijn op zoek naar een softwarematige oplossing die voorziet in rapportage, tijdregistratie, informatievoorziening over contactpersonen en medicijn gebruik van de cliënten, kostenbeheersing maar ook persoonsbeveiliging.

Gedurende de dag waren er verschillende sprekers die diverse onderwerpen aansneden als kosten beheersing, efficiëntie, kwaliteitsverbetering en aanbestedingen.

Stephan van Pol, manager ICT van Vitalis zorggroep, sprak namens Unit4Agresso over hoe over te gaan van papieren registratie naar digitale registratie van tijd en zorg.

Met Cura Mobile van Unit 4 Agresso kunnen zorgverleners via een PDA real time direct van de gegevens van zorg- en behandel type registreren. Zie hoe het werkt!

Op deze dag presenteert Unit4Agresso hun product Unit4Cura Mobile, een zorgapplicatie wat ontwikkeld is met behulp van de Navara Software.

Deze mobiele zorg toepassing helpt namelijk zorgverleners hun zorgtaken efficiënter uit te voeren door direct toegang te bieden tot belangrijke gegevens uit het dossier van de patiënt. Daarnaast wordt de benodigde tijd voor een bepaalde zorgtaak nauwkeurig bijgehouden. Metname voor de facturatie naar alle verschillende financiers in de zorg zoals zorgkantoren betekent dit een enorme vooruitgang. 

Landelijke Thuiszorgdag Programma:

http://www.sbo.nl/congressen/10e-landelijke-thuiszorgdag/programma

Meer informatie over Unit4Cura mobiele toepassing: 

http://tinylink.com/?CqWrAly3wn

With the transition to electronic health records mandated by the US government, healthcare providers must invest heftily to make the switch. Including a mobility solution can turn a big EHR investment into an even bigger return.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

According to the recent PricewaterhouseCoopers US report “Rock and a Hard Place: An analysis of the $36 billion impact from Health IT stimulus funding,” ARRA includes the goal of modernizing healthcare and reducing long-term costs through the use of information technology. Despite these well-intentioned ambitions, many healthcare organizations will likely find difficulty in coming up with the necessary funding to purchase EHR systems, comply with the government standards and make sure their system works well with others. Overall, the Act will have the most benefit for organizations with EHR systems already in place because theirs will be closer to the “interoperablility standards,” thereby receiving the most funding.

As the title of the PricewaterhouseCoopers report suggests, the plan sets aside a $36 billion stimulus package for early adopters of the government-certified systems and it has admirable objectives. President Barack Obama stated in his joint address to Congress this year, “Our recovery plan will invest in electronic health records and new technology that will reduce errors, bring down cost, ensure privacy and save lives.” In order to put the plan in motion, the HITECH Act pushes physicians to adopt an EHR system by offering incentive payments to those who do and later reducing Medicare payments to those who do not.

Yet even with the benefit of stimulus incentives, most healthcare organizations will find for the short-term, they are on the losing end of the equation. Government funding will not immediately offset the cost of implementing the system. However, one good – or better – piece of news hails from the IT mobility sector. Experts in IT mobility suggest that adding mobility solutions to existing and new EHR systems can make the difference in showing return on investment sooner rather than later. The trick is to locate a mobility solution that is efficient and cost-effective to implement.

“Implementing an electronic health records system is just the first step,” according to Yves Neidlinger, National Channel Manager for Navara, an international company specializing in middleware mobility solutions. “Providing users with patient information regardless of their location or type of device is another. No wonder most EHR providers are already looking for technologies to mobilize their applications.”

Despite the fact that using an EHR can reduce errors and make access to shared information easier, healthcare providers cite funding as an obstacle to implementing a new system. The ARRA provides funds to healthcare providers that implement a government-certified EHR system because in order to make EHRs the most beneficial to the US healthcare system overall, most healthcare organizations would need to be using these interoperable systems. Obviously, the switch across the sector cannot occur overnight.

When the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information (ONC) surveyed healthcare providers who had already implemented an EHR system, the findings showed that initially gains in efficiency were limited by a slowdown during the implementation of the system. Additionally, funds and time were required to train staff and maintain the system. The survey showed that overall, providers did not receive financial benefit from instigating an EHR system. Financial benefits have a better chance of occurring among large healthcare institutions. Nonetheless, these systems do bring healthcare to a better level. “Limiting or getting rid of paper forms and documents generates a huge move toward efficiency,” says Elias Crum, Navara Vice President. “It saves on paper, people, expensive transposition and typographical errors.”

Government Incentives Will Not Cover Costs of EHR Implementation

While there is no question whether EHR systems will lead to big gains for the US healthcare system overall, the PricewaterhouseCoopers US report explains that the incentives won’t actually cover the costs of implementing the system. Still, with Medicare reimbursement penalties for those who do not comply and a deadline of 2015, healthcare providers don’t have much choice other than to get on the IT ball.

Unfortunately, PricewaterhouseCoopers says that the stimulus finding for health IT is a “small carrot” compared to the amount of resources it will take to get the technology up and running in time. Providers who do not use government-certified EHRs by 2015 will face penalties.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ analysis shows that the stimulus incentives to comply with the new requirements for setting up and maintaining EHRs do not come near to compensating the overall costs. When added to the possibility of future penalties from reduced Medicare reimbursement, the situation becomes more extreme. Medicare penalties will begin in 2015 and be fully implemented by 2017.

Physicians can receive up to $44,000 each for adopting certified EHR systems, but their overall costs will exceed these incentives. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates a total cost range for a three-physician practice at $173,750 to $296,000. Considering the hefty upfront investment of implementing an EHR system, adding a mobility solution from a middleware provider can make the expense more cost-effective in the long run, but also bring faster benefits in the short term.

Mobility Solutions Add Efficiency and Financial Benefit to EHR System

“Not only do healthcare providers want access to real-time data anytime from anywhere, but they also want the additional subsidies from the US government for doing it,” says Neidlinger. An EHR solution alone can reduce administration costs by up to 50 percent, but taking that EHR mobile allows multiple providers to quickly and easily access the records. This greatly increases the return on investment.

“If a doctor accesses a patient record from a PC, that’s a certain dollar savings,” says Neidlinger. “If the doctor gets that same information from an iPhone or Windows Mobile Device, that’s an additional savings.” Working with a middleware product like the Navara Mobility Suite allows the EHR system to become mobile with virtually no development time because the applications have already been created and are continuously updated to work with new software and hardware. Mobility makes the upfront cost of implementing an EHR system, a move toward both time and cost efficiency.

Navara’s Leading Mobility Technology

Rather than a healthcare software provider creating a mobility solution from scratch, working with a middleware mobility provider can make adding the technology simple and fast. While it could take many months and thousands of dollars for a software company to write new code, and plenty of man-hours to keep that code updated, Navara’s mobility solutions are easy to implement because they are already created and are updated continuously. Navara provides middleware solutions that can easily mobilize any EHR systems onto handheld devices. Since Navara’s solutions work with any Smartphone like BlackBerry or iPhone, integration requires no changes to existing applications. With a Navara mobility solution, ISV and OEM partners can avoid timely and costly software development. Navara’s ease of customization means the middleware product is invisible to the end user – the healthcare providers who are spending time and money implementing the costly EHR systems. Navara stands out in the mobile application development arena through its uncommonly easy to deploy technology platform. “Overall there is a trend to mobilize applications in order to work more efficiently, thereby saving time and money,” said Neidlinger. “Navara offers a platform to software manufacturers that helps them develop a mobile extension of their product very easily.”

Navara’s Mobility Suite provides a low cost, high performance platform to extend the reach of applications to mobile workers. Navara can implement a mobile version of almost any application for a fraction of the cost of traditional development. Even better, the new mobile interface can be operational within a matter of hours.

Navara’s mission is to support all major mobile devices and integration technologies. Through constant development, Navara is able to support the latest mobile devices, operating systems, networks and hardware. This commitment ensures that Navara’s partners will continue to be able to offer the best mobile solutions to their customers through the lifecycle of their mobile interface product. Navara has yet to find a software application with which its mobility solution does not work.

Navara Helps Allscripts Clients Generate Immediate Response from Healthcare Providers

Navara recently presented a middleware package to Allscripts that allowed the healthcare software company to offer its clients enormous savings in response time. By using the OEM package from Navara, Allscripts was able to quickly make their Referral Management solution available via Smartphone or BlackBerry, which translates into immediate response time between post-acute healthcare providers and the hospitals they serve. Because they used Navara’s existing toolkit, Allscripts avoided the need to develop a mobile version of their own, which would have been a time-consuming and costly effort.

“The benefit really is to the customers I am serving,” said Greg Thurau, Vice President Product Management of Allscripts. “Using a Smartphone, post-acute care providers can receive and review electronic hospital referrals and respond back to the hospital right away.” Since the response time is shortened, the hospital is able to discharge the patient more quickly, leading to an improved relationship between the extended care provider and the hospital as well as efficiencies in the patient’s transition from one level of healthcare to the next. Improved efficiency and better patient care are exactly what the HITECH Act was intended to promote.

Navara’s products help independent software vendors in healthcare IT mobilize their existing solutions either through OEM solutions or standard products.

At this year’s Healthcare Information and Management Systems Conference (HIMSS), Neidlinger noticed a trend toward mobility in every aspect of technology in healthcare. “Walking the show floor, I started to notice that increasingly healthcare is becoming mobile,” he said. “Virtually all of the vendors either had a mobile offering or were in the process of planning one. For some companies this meant having mobile tablets that doctors can carry around, while for others it means having access to patient information on a BlackBerrry or iPhone.”

Mobility Solutions Make Vital Step Forward in Future of US Healthcare IT

When considering the EHR options, healthcare organizations are left with little choice but to comply within the next six years. As providers make the sizable investment in an EHR system, they will want to receive all of the benefits possible. By adding a mobility solution upfront, providers can immediately begin to see even more increased efficiency and return on investment. Tapping into the government incentives and avoiding the loss of Medicare benefits are just the beginning of what healthcare IT has to offer providers and patients. Implementing a mobility solution and get providers on a much faster road to HIT success.

Navara stands out in the mobile application development space through its uncommonly easy to deploy technology platform. Founded in 1998, Navara has office throughout The Netherlands, the United States, Germany and Belgium. Navara is a division of RAM Mobile Data. Navara can be reached by calling +1 866-759-5794. Additional information is available at www.navara.com.

The motivation to go mobile goes beyond a simple desire to increase productivity and efficiency. The Federal Government is offering incentives for providers to implement electronic health records (EHR) which is adding fuel to an already burning fire. Not only do healthcare providers want access to real-time data anytime from anywhere, but they also want the additional subsidies from the US government for doing it. My contact at a well known healthcare company explained that 40% of costs come from administrative tasks and implementing an EHR solution can reduce those costs by 50%. That’s significant.

Implementing an electronic health records system is just the first step. Providing users with patient information regardless of their location or type of device is another. No wonder why most of the EHR providers are looking for technologies to mobilize their applications. With each provider and device that accesses EHR, the return on investment increases. If a Doctor accesses a patient record from a PC, that’s a certain dollar saving, if the doctor gets that same information from an iPhone or Windows Mobile Device, that’s an additional saving. It was clear from the show floor in Chicago that everyone understood mobilizing healthcare applications is a winning strategy.

Look for more information on Healthcare and Mobility on:
http://www.navara.com/en/work_order_software/mobile_healthcare

In times of recession efficiency of organizations are necessary for survival (at least for non-banking organizations, banks get bailed out anyhow…). It’s a clear fact that companies need to save somewhere in order to compensate for the (potential) loss in revenues. In good times internal processes do not always get the attention they need and therefore can easily grow more and more complicated and inefficient. Now is the time to change!

On the other hand it’s very important to start working on your customer service and loyalty. Winning customers is difficult so do everything you can to keep your existing customers with you! Companies that actively do this were discussed in a March issue of Business Week, companies like Zappos, Amazon and BMW know how to keep customers!

See: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/09_09/B4121customer_service.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories

So where do we start?

Mobilizing your processes can help you by both saving costs and increasing customer loyalty and sales. Some examples:

• Salesforce improvements: make sure that your salespeople have access to customer data, installed base and inventory when they are at customer visits. Make sure that they get real-time suggestions for cross-selling and potential renewals. Surprise your customer by having all info available and have them place the order directly during their visit. You already have all the information that you need!
• Logistics and engineering optimization: make sure you don’t use inefficient paper work orders anymore. This saves on paper, people and expensive transposition and typographical errors. Another positive effect is the professional image you will expose to your customers. Also make sure to consider asset management technologies such as barcodes and/or RFID to get grip on your inventory and lost stock.
• Online shop mobilization: customers are getting more and more mobile. Make sure you have a mobile app added to your online shop! Not just a mobile interface but a true application that meets customer user expectations, like the Amazon.com iPhone app.

All of the above examples can be realized relatively quickly and at low cost. Mobile devices such as RIM Blackberries are widely available and software usually is offered in a ‘as a service’ model where low upfront investment is needed: pay as you go/grow!

With these new efficiencies in technology, organizations can quickly realize cost savings while at the same time improving their customer experience. That’s great relief during challenging economic times like these, and when times are better again you’ll be streamlined and ready for business as usual!

Now more than ever is truly the time to go mobile!