This week Mobile Heartbeat announced the appointment of Dr. Annabaker Garber, RN, PhD as our Chief Clinical Information Officer. Bringing more than 15 years of experience to the role, we sat down with Dr. Garber to better understand the challenges facing nurses and how improved communication is at the heart of addressing them.

Tell me about yourself and your experience with HCA?

I worked at HCA Healthcare for 6 ½ years as the CNIO. It is such a great organization, investing in leading-edge technologies for nurses and other clinicians. It was such a privilege to be part of a highly skilled team that brought so many tools to the clinicians. We implemented over 20 technologies or apps in the time I was there.

What are some of the challenges facing nurses today?

Nurses are facing sicker patients, higher demands on their time, a critical need for information during care, and a high likelihood of new colleagues working with them.

How is Mobile Heartbeat uniquely positioned to address these challenges?

Communication is the cornerstone of clinical care. Mobile Heartbeat helps address these challenges because it expedites communication across the team, and makes it easy to find the right person. It also makes it easy to find information with its ability to launch other apps in patient context.

Additionally, Mobile Heartbeat enables collaboration in a timely manner, using the directory to find colleagues easily, and supporting a variety of communication modes: text, calling, broadcast. The mobile platform used for Mobile Heartbeat can have additional tools, such as reference tools, integrations with other clinical systems and schedules, all on the same device.

How important is it to have a single platform to address clinical communication?

Clinicians are so busy that anything that takes their focus away from the patient is an annoyance at best, and dangerous at worst. Having a single platform decreases the clinician’s burden of having to remember where to find the information and tools they need.

How do you see the industry and Mobile Heartbeat changing in the next 5 years?

Over the next 5 years, machine learning and AI will help clinicians turn the data and information about the patient into suggested actions. The use of voice and natural language processing will decrease the burden of typing and free the clinician’s hands for other tasks. And the ability to share information and insights across platforms will become much more robust with FIHR.

Any final thought?

This is a great time to be involved in clinical communications. We are crossing the chasm from the our older ways of approaching communication to a stronger, more interoperable, and smarter platform. I am really excited to see what’s on the horizon.