Birmingham makes good use of Webalo

The use of a mobile development platform by University Hospitals of Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust has been praised in a US study on mobile health.

The trust used the Webalo conversion tool to enable clinicians to access three separate systems used within the hospital on their BlackBerry smartphones.

Pharmacists are now able to respond to requests for medication by using the smartphone link to the hospital’s pharamaceutical database – Pharmacy On Call System.

It has also enabled consulting physicians working in neurology to access important patient information while off-site.

The trust’s Neurological On-Call Referral System (NORSE) allows doctors within the trust to contact specialists if they need assistance on a specific case.

The specialist is then able to access information held within the trust on that patient via their smartphone in order to help with the consultation. The system is said to have greatly increased the speed of diagnosis and treatment.

The Webalo mobile platform was also used to send live reports of key performance indicators to administrators’ phones so they can monitor compliance and take corrective action if necessary.

A study of mobile health done by Galvin Consulting, based in Washington, has highlighted the use of Webalo to make formerly in-house only system available on smartphones.

“[It] used Webalo’s mobile development platform to quickly develop the system, without adding any additional IT development or operations staff,” the study said.

The report continues to say the use of such mobile platforms enables the NHS to create new healthcare apps within short timeframes, such as days or even hours. University Hospitals Birmingham managed to create the pharmacy app in less than one day.

The study said mobile application tools are increasingly being viewed as a means to greater productivity in healthcare settings.

“Physician demand for smart devices, particularly tablets, is expected to drive this growth, but other healthcare workers are also pushing for increased mobility, particularly given the dual goals of improved patient care and lower costs.”