Everyday we hear about Virtual Desktops making a positive impact. Perhaps no where is this more true than in healthcare, where the need for always-on access and ease-of-use intersects with the requirements associated with securing personal medical records.
Together with Imprivata we are helping clinicians become better more efficient caregivers. Our joint solutions help enable the clinical desktop to become a better assistant in patient care by removing some of the “context switching” associated with a clinicians day-to-day tasks. In so doing, we enable caregivers to do what they do best. Take care of Patients.
The following is the first of a three part series of post by David Ting, Founder and CTO, Imprivata. We hope you find it interesting and informative.
Frank Nydam
Director Healthcare Solutions & Market Development, VMware
Four Tips for Increasing Clinician Electronic Medical Record Adoption With Virtual Desktops
Guest Blog Post (Part 1 of a 3 part series)
By David Ting, Founder and CTO, Imprivata
It’s important for hospitals to carefully guard the productivity and workflow of clinicians – and particularly physicians – when pushing new technologies like electronic medical records (EMR).
A successful EMR implementation takes more than technology – it requires groundwork to gain clinician acceptance:
- Studying the clinician workflow before deploying the EMR solution to best match deployment specifics to workflow needs.
- Deploying the solution in phases and finding advocates in each group – particularly physician advocates.
- Where possible, using physicians to train physicians on new technologies.
However, you can use technology to 'sweeten' the EMR deployment. Because EMR adoption adds new tasks to the clinician's current workflow, it's important to eliminate other tasks that are often tedious and time-consuming.
This is where Imprivata and VMware View enter the picture. Imprivata has integrated its access management solution with VMware View, adding single sign-on (SSO), authentication management, and user roaming/location awareness for the virtual desktop session as well as the applications it contains.
What's the benefit for hospitals? Rolling out EMR solutions with a roaming virtual desktop eliminates barriers to EMR adoption and gives clinicians their own adoption incentives of easier login and streamlined access to data. Here are a few tips to increase clinician EMR adoption:
Tip 1: Eliminate password problems. Implementing SSO for the virtual desktop and all of its applications delivers a quick, highly visible win. Clinicians can stop remembering all of their different logins, and no longer have to log in to each application.
Tip 2: Provide No Click Access™ to applications. Give clinicians No Click Access when moving between locations with their virtual desktop. For example, physicians can touch a finger to a biometric reader, or touch a badge to a reader and the workstation retrieves their personal virtual desktop. The same technology works for signing medication orders or e-prescriptions – a single touch is all it takes.
Tip 3: Provide One-Touch Desktop Roaming: To really streamline workflow, give roaming clinicians a virtual desktop that follows them throughout the day. For example, open a patient record in the patient room and make some notes. Then move to the office, touch the keypad to retrieve the desktop with the open patient record, and complete the entry in the quieter office environment. Imprivata OneSign can add location intelligence to switch default printers or other devices depending on the clinician's actual location.
Tip 4: Let them use iPads. Physicians are not immune to gadget envy. With VMware View, physicians can access the virtual desktop using an iPad, making the EMR application even more accessible and attractive to use. Imprivata OneSign takes care of managing authentication, with integrated audit and compliance reporting.
Improving clinician productivity and satisfaction is not just 'nice-to-have' – it's essential in today's complex healthcare environment, where technology is disrupting traditional methods of patient care. The secure, roaming virtual desktop from VMware and Imprivata streamlines access to patient records and makes new technologies more accessible for time-pressed clinicians.
Bio: Named one of Infoworld's Top 25 CTOs of 2006, David Ting, Founder and CTO, Imprivata has more than 20 years of experience in developing advanced imaging software and systems for high security, high-availability systems. David has been involved in a number of start-up ventures including Lexidata, Inc., and Delphax Systems, now a division of Xerox. He holds eight patents and has several patents pending.
