A recent article in Healthcare IT News caught my interest. Called “Mobile apps helping reduce readmissions,” it offered best practices in app development from Andrey Ostrovsky, a physician and CEO of the Boston-based Care at Hand, an app-based care coordination system.
The article finds health systems are increasingly turning to mobile apps to help reduce preventable hospital readmissions, which Medicare estimates costs taxpayers nearly $17 billion each year. However, these apps have not resulted in solutions tied to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s guideline to enhance patient experience and population health while simultaneously reducing health care costs. Only 2 percent of current mobile health apps achieve the guideline, finds Ostrovsky, while just 23 percent have peer-reviewed research evidence for their claims.
Earlier this year, Epic announced plans to open its own app store and allow outside developers to create apps that sync with its electronic medical record platform. Such activity reinforces the opportunity for Johns Hopkins Medicine to lead the way in developing mobile apps in line with our mission to provide patient-centered care and to prevent, diagnose and treat illness.
We must ask ourselves: Are we doing enough in this area? Can we do more?
Best Practice Tips for App Developers
- Be evidence-based.
- Produce positive outcomes for reimbursement.
- Identify risk factors for patients.
- Validate quality improvement claims within six months of deployment.
- Support National Quality Forum Committee measurements.
- Improve workforce quality and satisfaction.
- Be platform agnostic.
- Adhere to interoperability standards.
- Sustain long-term supports and services.
- Provide technical assistance for baseline capacity.
–Andrey Ostrovsky, as quoted in Healthcare IT News article “Mobile apps helping reduce readmissions”