secure texting, and telehealth
secure texting, and telehealth
Respond to the post bellow offering additional/alternative ideas regarding opportunities and risks related to the observations shared.
Main Post
iPhone technology, secure texting, and telehealth
The hospital that I currently work for piloted the use of iPhones in addition to our work station on wheels (WoW). We can use this iPhone technology for charting simple nursing interventions, receive STAT orders and discharge orders, and communicate with our colleagues through texting. Our WoWs enable us to do “secure texting” to a physician, some physicians prefer the secure texting technology some don’t, but surely there are times that the answering service may fail to page them in a timely manner and the secure texting technology becomes very useful. As nurses, we can see through our WoWs as soon as the physician reads the text message, that way we know they are aware. This technology saves us some precious time we spend on the phone waiting on hold just to page a physician for orders, condition and/or results. Our hospital also offers telehealth services especially for those who are likely to be readmitted due to chronic diseases. We mostly see a telehealth order for a patient with cardiac issues.
Risks and benefits
The biggest threat that I believe healthcare technology is at risk for is privacy. According to Chaet, Clearfield, Sabin and Skimming (2017), privacy and confidentiality are just “as important in the context of telehealth and telemedicine as in hospital and office settings” (p. 1138). I surmise, organizations providing this type of technology in healthcare have an incredible security system in place. The secure texting technology, we are instructed not to use full names, instead, we use room numbers of the patients.
