As the old saying goes, it’s better to repair the roof when the sun is shining instead of waiting for a leak. The same premise applies to hospital communications systems: it’s better to modernize your crisis communication plan before a crisis happens and you really need it.
This is the takeaway message from an article I wrote for Becker’s Health IT & CIO Review, “It’s Time to Modernize Emergency Communications at Hospitals.” Becker’s is a leading news outlet for healthcare IT executives, and I’m honored they elected to publish my call-to-action for the healthcare system to drop its antiquated telephone tree and pager communication methods in favor of secured emergency communications technology like BlackBerry’s AtHoc.
AtHoc uses social networking principles to enable hospital leadership to share urgent information broadly with staff members. Its two-way communications features also help healthcare practitioners collaborate faster and more reliably. Hospitals are using AtHoc for anything from managing everyday operations, like shift and scheduling changes or IT downtime notifications, to sharing information and instructions to protect personnel during life-threatening situations like an active shooter attack.
In healthcare, communications can mean the difference between life and death, and having the right communications systems in place before you need them can reduce the impact of crises. It can also help foster job satisfaction among staff members who may feel they are out of the loop with other emergency communications methods.
For more about mobile healthcare and why hospitals need to modernize their emergency communications, please read my article in Becker’s Health IT & CIO Review. And for more about AtHoc, see Inside BlackBerry’s previous posts, webcasts on BlackBerry Enterprise Webcast Central and the AtHoc blog.
Security standards around connected medical devices are woefully lacking, but that’s about to change. Don’t miss the unveiling of DTSec, the first consensus cybersecurity standard for medical devices with security and assurance requirements, by BlackBerry Chief Security Officer David Kleidermacher. It’ll happen May 23-24 at MEDSec 2016, the first international conference covering security and privacy for the Internet of Medical Things. Learn more and register today at MEDSecMeeting.org.
