The COVID-19 pandemic has caused numerous difficulties across various care settings within the hospital, including higher than normal patient volume in emergency rooms, personnel shortages, diminished bed capacity, and limited resources, especially for PPEs. These challenges lead to overcrowding, increased clinician workload, higher demands on resources, and the additional obstacles of trying to create separation between infected and non-infected patients to minimize the spread of viruses.
With an end goal to address these difficulties, hospitals are creating temporary care settings for COVID-19 patients outside of the hospital or in isolation wards, making remote and easily transferable tools essential in delivering consistent quality care, while allowing clinicians to remotely monitor multiple patients to reduce contact as well as lessen bedside monitoring disturbances and interruptions.
Medical Tablets Used in Alternative Care Facilities
Alternative care facilities, such as medical tents or temporary pop-up hospital sites, have been set up by healthcare systems whose main facilities have been reorganized and crowded. While alternative care sites increase capacity, the chance for errors in patient identification or treatments is higher due to the fast-paced environment. Equipping healthcare workers with a medical tablet helps to ensure accurate data entry, enhances patient data security, and maximizes internal operational efficiencies.
Replacing paper-based filing data entry with the use of bulky clipboards, medical tablets have revolutionized the way data is captured and retrieved at the point of care. These tablets eliminate the need to record information on paper and then later enter the data into a computer system which leads to risk of human error. Recording the data into a medical tablet saves time, energy, money and improves patient care by reducing wait times. More importantly, medical tablets help to address personnel shortages as they provide healthcare professionals with mobility, up-to-date patient information at the tip of their fingertips, and the ability to care for multiple patients within a shorter period of time.
Medical Tablets Reduce the need for PPE
Utilizing medical tablets also helps with limited PPE by reducing the number of staff members who enter patients’ rooms. Medical staff need not change into PPE just to check on their patient. Through video conferencing with the aid of a medical tablet, patients and practitioners can share information and conduct appointments efficiently. Medical tablets can act as a clinical workspace, combining patient monitoring views and the hospital’s IT applications, allowing clinicians to interact across multiple systems. Medical tablets are enclosed in an antimicrobial casing that reduces the spread of germs and bacteria. The fanless technology also reduces the spread of airborne particulates.
The introduction of tablets for healthcare has helped improve the services provided to patients both in emergency situations and long-term care. Many healthcare facilities are investing in medical tablets across their entire organization to ensure that various systems are efficient and operating seamlessly. Utilizing medical tablets in healthcare benefits the patient-centric experience by improving communication in real-time as data is entered and recorded into the system, patient care collaboration, data management collection, and workflow efficiency.