The mobile space should be viewed in totality and thought about how it would ideally fit into the enterprise. If you can seamlessly move a workflow from a desktop app to a web app into a mobile app to a remote medical device, that’s mobility. Creating an app that runs on a smartphone is not mobility of workflow, it’s just an app. Say, a doctor is looking at a patient in an electronic healthcare record, and say the doctor is asking the patient to use a particular diagnostic or therapeutic or content based application. There needs to be someone who needs to know which doctor had prescribed a particular therapeutic or diagnostic app (just like a drug or a device prescription) to a patient. The prescribed app’s authenticity needs to also be verified. Someone needs to check if the app has indeed been launched, has been sandboxed, has been used extensively or if any privacy data has been locally stored so that it may pose a risk if the device is lost.
Viewing healthcare mobility in its entirety and looking at how different workflows are used on different devices would let you fit the mobile apps appropriately for that particular enterprise. This view is what I believe is truly missing in the healthcare IT industry, especially where related to mobile. We’re so enamored by smartphones and simple apps that we think there’s actual value in any particular app more so than in the total mobility of the workflows themselves.
Chris: That’s interesting. When we talked to more of the system integrators around healthcare IT, it seemed that for the practitioners of electronic healthcare record systems, “going mobile” meant using a Citrix Receiver to remote desktop into a Windows machine that actually gained access into the electronic healthcare record’s system. As the data was all streamed to the device and since no data was ever actually on the mobile device, they’d have the ultimate security even though this methodology lacked on the usability side. Are you starting to see the companies wanting to match the user experience with the data privacy which would drive a more richer experience or do you think this is even further in terms of timeline?
Shahid: Yeah, I unfortunately believe it’s further off in terms of timeline, because the kinds of smart companies that you just asked about don’t really exist today in the way that you’re talking about. Here’s why. Most people who give you the “excuse” or explanation that they’re using Citrix for security are not actually telling the whole truth, because in most cases they’re using Citrix and other techniques because they can’t support real mobility. They can support moving their screens from a PC onto a tablet through Citrix or Terminal Services, and they tell you that because that’s all they know how to support. They know it’s not the right thing to do but can’t easily admit it.
They know, for example, that an iPhone or an Android, which has email on it, does not look like Microsoft Outlook. Imagine that vendors who gave you email on your mobile device gave you the same story that they couldn’t possibly put email on these devices because they were not secure enough. It would be an insane statement. The only reason we accept it in healthcare is because we have no choice and many customers don’t know better.
