The first hospital in the United States to fully integrate Apple products into operations got started Monday in Lithonia, Georgia. It’s a transformation in which iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and Macs are deployed throughout the 100 bed facility all of which are running Epic Systems’ suite of healthcare applications.
With this latest setup, nurses and doctors can easily communicate with one another and access patient data, as each nurse and each doctor is equipped with an iPhone. Apple Watches help get lab alerts directly to a clinician’s wrist while iPads are mounted to the wall outside patient rooms to display real time care information. Patients can follow their treatment plan, message their care team, order meals and check records through their iPad that’s attached to each patient bed.
So said Dr. Rashida La Barrie, a physician at Emory Hillandale, who has used the updated access. “I can stay up to date with my patients in a way that wasn’t possible before,” La Barrie said. I think it’s such a mistake when you take a look at healthcare, because historically it’s been slow to adopt technology.
Apple devices are also seeing their adoption among healthcare professionals to meet administrative challenges. Dr. Using Apple devices with Epic and Abridge’s ambient documentation tools saves urologic oncologist Vikram Narayan an average of two hours per day, he reported. “There is a complexity to healthcare,” he said. However that complexity is cut down for clinicians by using modern, well integrated tools. That’s what we need,” he said.
We’ve seen similar benefits on the nurse side as well; faster login times, easier documentation and… nicer, clearer Retina displays on iMacs leading to higher satisfaction and better patient engagement. “We engage patients differently with this,” Edna Brisco, chief nursing officer for Emory Hillandale, said.
The implications go beyond just changing technology, we’re changing a culture, said Dr. Ravi Thandani, executive vice president for health affairs at Emory University. “It’s a new model of what patient first, tech enabled care can look like.” Emory Hillandale Hospital is embracing technology’s full potential to improve the healthcare process while creating what the future of care could look like through Apple’s ecosystem.
