Drivers and Challenges of Wireless Solutions in Future Healthcare

What do IT-oriented healthcare professionals believe to be the most attractive and credible wireless applications in healthcare? What do they think about the challenges? These questions were presented to 70 randomly selected participants at the HIMSS08 conference in February 2008 at Orlando, Florida, USA. The questions were formulated in a one-page query form and the data was uploaded into the ZEF-analysis tool (zefsolutions.com/en). Results show that on average the most attractive and credible application is wireless alarming and calling help. The second and third are mobile access to patient health records and vital signs monitoring. The results also show that process change challenges are remarkably more difficult than technical challenges. The process change from the doctors’ point of view is particularly severe. Among technical challenges usability of the mobile user interface is seen the most difficult. Security of patient data is not considered to be among the most severe challenges.