The number of seniors dealing with chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiac diseases continues to rise, requiring home healthcare providers to adopt new technologies, including mobility solutions, to deliver convenient and cost-effective care. Many home healthcare providers are exploring how equipping clinic staff and patients with Apple devices can improve the quality and delivery of personalized home healthcare services.
What Can Apple Devices do for Home Healthcare?
Seniors increasingly prefer the convenience of home healthcare. It’s a way for them to stay at home surrounded by their loved ones without needing to travel to healthcare facilities to receive treatment and services. For healthcare organizations, being able to provide care at a patient’s home significantly reduces their overhead costs.
Here are 5 reasons home healthcare providers should consider using Apple devices to deliver home healthcare services
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iPads eliminate the need for the piles of paper documents healthcare workers need to carry to access patient medical records and reports while providing consultation. iPads are already being used in Australia to help deliver care to their indigenous population.
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Leading home healthcare software providers offer iOS apps that workers can use to access their day to day schedules, generate invoices for the services, track their time efficiently, and manage and update care tasks for the patients on their iPads and iPhones while they are at the patient’s home.
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Apple devices improve collaboration and delivery of care by allowing patients and clinic staff to initiate video calls with the patient’s doctor using Facetime.
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Location services on Apple devices enable home healthcare providers to track the location of workers, and in the event of any cancelled appointments, they can locate, coordinate and re-assign a worker to a new patient.
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Remote patient monitoring is possible by combining an Apple Watch and FDA-cleared KardiaBand to bring in real-time electrocardiogram (EKG) and irregular heart rate (atrial fibrillation) monitoring to save lives proactively.
With the clear benefits that Apple devices offer, many healthcare organizations will want to adopt Apple devices—but are healthcare organizations ready to handle the security and compliance challenges introduced by these devices?
Apple Devices and the Importance of Data Security
Before rolling out Apple devices for home healthcare initiatives, a healthcare organization should ensure that they have the proper security and management in place. Data and apps on devices need to be secured to comply with healthcare regulations. In situations where devices are lost or stolen, IT administrators need to be able to recover those assets – an Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) solution can address these needs.
Using EMM solutions, IT administrators can wipe and lock devices remotely, enforce data encryption and device passcodes to secure data on devices. An EMM solution also enables IT administrators to troubleshoot devices remotely, which reduces device downtime and increases the productivity of remote workers. If any device is lost or stolen, EMM solutions allow IT administrators to locate the devices using location services and prevent anyone from accessing the patient data on devices -everything can be smoothly executed from the EMM console.
Trust SOTI for EMM
At SOTI, we understand the importance of data security and compliance and for delivering EMM solutions for healthcare providers. SOTI is a pioneer in EMM/MDM industry and has 20 years of experience in securing and managing business mobility and IoT for over 17,000 enterprise customers globally.
Explore more about our capabilities in healthcare and home care at soti.net