Bedside Medical Device Integration (BMDI)

For the past several months, all the buzz in healthcare information technology has centered around the “meaningful use” guidelines associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).  Most of the talk also has swirled around what’s needed in electronic health records (EHR) software to achieve this meaningful use –and then get a piece of the $19 billion in incentive funds tied to the adoption of electronic health records.

Bluetooth technology is alive and well in healthcare. The short-range communications technology that replaces cables connecting portable and/or fixed devices while maintaining high levels of security—at a speed averaging 1 Mbps—delivers to market robustness, low power and low cost, just as the need for mobility in healthcare is rising due to the adoption of new forms of healthcare service delivery, including telemedicine, home healthcare and managed care.

Competition among mobile clinical assistant (MCA) vendors continues to intensify as healthcare providers eye new mobile technologies that can improve the delivery of care. This trend was perhaps most evident at HIMSS09, where vendors such as Motion Computing, Panasonic, Philips Healthcare and others displayed their latest offerings within a few feet of one another.

Having covered a broad range of healthcare technologies as a B2B journalist since the mid-1990s—most recently as Editor of MobileHealthWatch.com—I was excited to receive an invitation to help build the HealthcareGoesMobile online community. As far as I'm concerned, and in simplest terms, mobile point-of-care is the place to be right now.