A telehealth framework for mobile nursing: improving patient medical record management and staff communications

Abstract

There is an increasing need for health treatments to be delivered in homes rather than in the healthcare institutions due to its convenience. Nepean Outreach Services (NOS) based at the Nepean hospital aims to provide care for patients recently discharged in their home environment. Care provided by NOS is managed using patient medical records (PMRs) and communication amongst various nursing, medical and specialist staff. Current methods of recording PMRs and communication are problematic. Patient data is difficult to access; communication method between staff is limited. This study proposes a new Telehealth framework specifically designed for NOS. Our framework aims to improve PMR management and enhance the quality and consistency of communication between the NOS staff. We exemplify our framework with a custom-built Outreach App for a mobile device (iPad) which was deployed at the NOS clinic for experimental evaluations. The App provides functions to efficiently take PMRs by capturing written and visual data at the patient's home, as well as the ability to share the data via Cloud-based services (HealthVault) and facilitate video-conferencing communications between NOS staff.