Innovative Role Of M-Health

The concept of m-Health has caught the attention of Medical Transcription Industry when it has slowly started moving away from the traditional ways of transcription. Many believe that mobile technology is the answer for many healthcare problems in the U.S. In a study conducted by the CTIA-The Wireless Association jointly with Harris Interactive in the year 2009, it was found that 78% of Americans were in favor of mobile health solutions. Both physicians and patients agree that mobile health practices are a better way for improved patient care and, with mobile technology patients can have better control over their own healthcare. Doctors are confident that more than one quarter of all their patients can be benefited from such services. Studies by Market research firms show that by 2012, 81% of physicians would start using smart phones and tablets. According Steve Largent, President and CEO of CTIA-The Wireless Association, m-Health is a great equalizer that will allow millions of Americans irrespective of their location and economic condition to have access to the best healthcare facilities with significant improvements in the medical community’s ability to reduce medical errors” among several other advantages. Truly it is a “force multiplier”. Grey areas However, some experts warn that it is not without pitfalls. They hold the view that HITECH Act has brought in certain level of compulsion for the hospitals and service providers to adopt HIT at a faster pace and there is a marked fear that widespread adoption of EMRs can play the spoilsport in terms of higher quality and accuracy in capturing of data and managing the overall cost. In support, they point towards the speech recognition software where the manufacturers often dictate the accuracy levels leaving clients with little option to decide which dictation to be managed with the software and which one through regular transcription. Another area of concern is the additional touch points. They argue that the more the additional layers, more will be the need of additional touch points requiring additional levels of quality assurance. This makes the quality measurement process cumbersome. This is only a single illustrative case. Advantages For technology solutions like speech recognition software, healthcare service providers have several options before them for speech editing or Medical transcription services that can be provided at competitive rates. Today, converting an unstructured medical dictation into structured clinical information is easy and quick. Software manufacturing companies will definitely hasten up delivery of these solutions that can advance quality analytics and thus improve patient care, comply with the regulations even more strictly while at the same time enhancing the revenue cycle. In the opinion of Peter Masanotti, President and CEO at Med Quist and founding partner of Clinical Data Industry Association “Complete and accurate clinical documentation is mission critical for healthcare providers.” Quality of Healthcare documentation would be possible only through human intervention, assisted by processes and technology. It is m-Health technology that is going to play a major role in this. Of course there are challenges and these too would be met. The need of the hour is better policies for further innovation, swift certification and easier integration.