It’s a frosty 7 degrees Fahrenheit outside right now, but thankfully we’re nearing the end of this first (and very lengthy) cold snap.  That means two things; 1) winter has really arrived in New England, 2) it’s time to review 2017 and look into the crystal ball for 2018.

What happened in the Clinical Communications & Collaboration (CC&C) market in 2017? It was the year of enterprise adoption. Hospitals that began their deployment of smartphones and CC&C software realized significant value by focusing on widespread adoption throughout the enterprise. This breakthrough was driven by going beyond the traditional clinical user base and  enabling the remainder of the hospital staff to participate in the CC&C ecosystem. From pharmacy staff to dieticians, our team at Mobile Heartbeat collaborated with our clients’ users to enable broad, widespread adoption. We helped our clients quantify this success through measuring Monthly Active Users (MAU). More than simply measuring the number of user accounts, MAU measures how many unique individuals in your healthcare system conducted a high-value communication each month. Your MAU should consistently increase and when it does, you reap additional network benefits (see previous post on Metcalfe’s Law).

The broad adoption in 2017 matches our view of mobility and CC&C ─ which is all about the Value Hierarchy. As customers deploy smartphones and CC&C software, they begin to climb the pyramid, seeing each new level bring significant additional benefit. In effect, 2017 saw the leading hospitals focus on the first level of the pyramid – Adoption – and the results were staggering. The average Mobile Heartbeat facility has over 800 MAUs with our largest systems (9 facilities) recently crossing the 11,000 MAU threshold.

This takes us to what we see in the 2018 crystal ball. It does not take great foresight to predict that these leading hospitals will now put effort into the second level of the pyramid – Optimizing Workflows. They will begin to measure “who is communicating with whom,” “how often” and “at what times.” This data will then be used to understand the interaction within workflows and the required communication. These insights will then be applied to optimize the critical workflows, saving previous time while improving patient care. In essence, our clients will be taking their first steps in implementing “lean thinking” for their critical workflows.

At Mobile Heartbeat, we are ready to support our clients’ journeys as they scale the value pyramid in 2018. For new adopters of CC&C, our Project Managers and Solutions Engineers will assist you in achieving adoption as you deploy a mobility system in your organization. For those clients who are aiming to improve workflows, our Clinical Services group will apply their Informatics knowledge and experience to your specific challenges.

We’ll make this official at Mobile Heartbeat by naming 2018 as The Year of the Workflow. Characterized by improved efficiency, improved responsiveness to patients and higher quality patient care, The Year of the Workflow will be memorable.