Challenges and opportunities in achieving secure hospital clinical mobility management: An illustrative use case

Abstract

Objective: To qualitatively describe a use case at Yale New Haven Health System (YNHHS) illustrating the need for and effective deployment of innovative technologies to manage an enterprise-owned shared device (EOSD) management program. EOSD management provides clinicians with secure, rapid access to enterprise mobile devices and applications, maintains devices in functional, use ready condition for clinicians, and enables enterprise tracking and reduced loss of devices.
Methods: Executive leaders in clinical information technology and informatics management at YNHHS were interviewed through written and telephonic communication. Qualitative data was gathered through communications between clinical and information technology executives and the implementation support team of a leading identity and access management (IAM) solutions and EOSD management solution provider. Use case information was gathered, integrated and shared with health system executives and health IT/informatics leaders to verify the description of unmet needs, solution objectives and impact/value delivered after implementation of the EOSD management solution.
Results: Benefits realized from implementation of an enterprise-shared mobility management solution included establishment of a cohesive and comprehensive enterprise-owned, shared device management strategy. This included effective monitoring and dynamic management of the system’s mobile device fleet, and better IT resource management with reduced mobile device loss. The IT administrative burden was reduced. While not surveyed systematically, improved clinician experience and satisfaction were reported to IT leaders anecdotally. EOSD management solution deployment was rapid, as was the time to improved clinician mobile experience and clear demonstration of value.
Conclusions: A leading US health system was able to rapidly deploy a shared mobile device management solution that enabled effective monitoring and dynamic management of the enterprise mobile device fleet, with easier and faster clinician device access and workflows, and reduced IT administrative demand and costs. While the complexities associated with increased clinical mobility in healthcare will likely continue to grow, issuing future device and mobile management challenges that require effective hospital system response, technologies have emerged that enable more effective, efficient and satisfactory organizational mobility performance.

Keywords

Mobile device access / Clinical mobility / Mobility / Mobile device management / Identity and access management

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors are indebted to the YNHHS IT/informatics team for their support during implementation of the new shared mobile management solution, and to the clinicians that adopted the new processes and conveyed feedback on system performance and needs.

AUTHORS CONTRIBUTIONS

GAG and SPK led the conceptualization of the study, gathered and integrated the data; GAG wrote the first and subsequent drafts, created the tables, and completed revisions and editing of all drafts; GS, MP, MR and RH provided the data, reviewed and validated the data integration and presentation, and reviewed and approved all drafts of the manuscript; SPK reviewed and provided edits to all manuscript drafts, and supervised the project.

ETHICAL STATEMENT

Informed patient consent was not required because no patient clinical or identity data was collected, and no patient interventions were completed during the course of study. Therefore ethical review board approval was not required and waived.

FUNDING

This work had no external financial support.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST DISCLOSURE

GAG is an external medical advisor to Imprivata; GS, MP, MR and RH are employees of Yale New Haven Health System; SPK is an employee of Imprivata.

ETHICS APPROVAL

The Publication Ethics Committee of the Sciedu Press. The journal’s policies adhere to the Core Practices established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

PROVENANCE AND PEER REVIEW

Not commissioned; externally double-blind peer reviewed.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

DATA SHARING STATEMENT

No additional data are available.

OPEN ACCESS

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

COPYRIGHTS

Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal.

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