Opportunity

Waitemata DHB allied health staff (such as dietitians, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, social workers and speech-language therapists) provide a fundamental service to patients in the community.

Some of the issues faced by community staff include:

not having immediate access to patient’s medical history
having to return to their work place to complete their paperwork and to update a patient’s clinical record
limited access to current technology including new education and therapy tools for their patients
lack of alternative methods to interact with their patients

Enabling Allied Health staff to provide a service to patients in the community while accessing systems with mobile devices

Introduce new ways of interacting with our patients and our patients’ information
Provide patients and staff with access to the patient’s medical records in real-time in the patient’s home to improve the clinical interaction
Reduce time our staff spend travelling and writing notes

We provided 122 clinicians from 7 teams across adult and paediatric services with an iPad mobile device
Clinicians represent 10 professions including

dietetics
psychology
physiotherapy
occupational therapy
neurodevelopmental therapy

Devices are connected on a mobile device management platform to maintain security and governance
Devices provide six tools listed in the graphic below

MobileCommunityTools

Approximately 95% of our community allied health clinicians are using their iPad daily as part of their work. The iPads are used for a variety of activities including:

managing emails, calendars and appointments
writing patient notes
using Facetime to communicate with other clinicians or with patients
downloading images to support discussions with patients, eg therapy equipment

FEEDBACK

Clinicians were generally optimistic about mobile devices
They told us using a mobile device could increase job satisfaction and make their job easier
Ratings increased following training and six months of mobile device use
This shows clinicians still felt the mobile device was valuable after using it for six months

The graph below compares pre-(orange) and post-(grey) agreement with the statements lists

MobileCommunityImpact

DEVICE USE

Each clinician saved an average 15 minutes per day on administration and completed an average 1.5 extra patient visits per week after six months of mobile device use
Clinicians, patients and allied health leaders told us the devices are important for administration and education

MobileCommunityFeedback