Medical Tablets Are Essential As Patient Engagement Solutions

A TV in the waiting room is no longer enough

Medical grade tablets are at the center of several unique patient engagement systems that have been developed in the past few years. Below are only a few of the more effective and exciting applications that have been observed.

Patient-Controlled Robots

In one of the more exciting applications of patient engagement technology, AdventHealth has leveraged healthcare tablets to give patients the ability to interact with loved ones and explore the hospital from the comfort of their patient room. They did this by equipping a remote controllable segway transportation device with a medical-grade tablet. As a result, the children’s hospital could use these new robots to allow their patients to more comfortably socialize with doctors, nurses, other patients, and parents who now need to isolate due to the recent pandemic developments.

Real-Time Data

In a recent interview, Darren Dworkin, Chief Information Office at Cedars-Sinai Los Angeles, describes how healthcare tablets are fantastic tools for delivering real-time healthcare data to patients. Applications of patient engagement technology such as this empower patients, raise satisfaction rates, and push a facility into more value-based care by becoming more transparent with things like pricing, procedures, and treatment options. Transparency is essential as we move further into patient empowered modes of healthcare consumerism.

Patient Edu-tainment

Several hospitals and care facilities have employed tablets at the patient’s bedside that can be loaded up with educational modules, activities, and more on a given patient’s condition. Depending on patient age, these modules can range from games and chatbots to detailed presentations and more. In addition, these devices can often be loaded with streaming services, games utterly unrelated to conditions, and other strict entertainment applications whose benefits can’t be understated when patient stress is at its highest.

Remote Monitoring Programs

Remote monitoring as a branch-off of telehealth has exploded in popularity for obvious reasons as we enter a more socially distant mode of healthcare. Remote monitoring allows physicians and care professionals to track important patient vitals from afar. This is done, usually, by giving patients a pack of vital tracking and reporting tools that can be used from home and whose findings can be shared with providers. These patient engagement systems are incredibly effective, engaging patients with their care while also educating them on how their vitals and treatment play into each other.

Meeting Patient Expectations at Check-In

Patients are increasingly expecting their experiences in the healthcare system to be as streamlined as possible. According to interactive tech specialists at Elo, this has resulted in broader adoption of touch screen solutions, like those made possible with medical tablets. Providing familiar technology like tablets allows patients to quickly check in, share concerns with their provider, and elaborate on any pre-consultation information they feel may help their treatment. This raises patient engagement and satisfaction rates as they feel their needs are met while physicians get to sidestep the draining administrative work that would have otherwise sapped away; this time, they now have to speak with their patients.

What to Look for In a Healthcare Tablet

When browsing for tablets to deploy, a few key features and certifications are required. Often, devices such as tablets can give off electromagnetic waves that can affect other nearby devices used to maintain a patient’s health. Thus, any tablet you decide to implement should hold an IEC60601-1 certification, ensuring that it has been tested and proven safe for near-patient use.

Secondly, in an age where infection rates and the need to lower them could not be more pronounced, a tablet that is IP65 certified is also paramount. This certification guarantees that the device is fortified against dust and, more importantly, liquid ingress, which means staff can disinfect the tablet repeatedly with liquid sanitizing agents without damaging its internal components in the process. Suppose the tablet is also designed with antimicrobial properties baked into the device’s materials instead of using an antimicrobial coating. In that case, those properties also won’t be rubbed away by repeated disinfection.

For more information on how you can get started with medical tablet-fueled patient engagement solutions yourself, contact an expert from Cybernet today.