Mobile Computing Is Next Technology Frontier for Healthcare Providers.

Wireless information technology has the potential to save healthcare providers significant time in accomplishing routine administrative and healthcare-related tasks. Wireless information technology includes the concept of mobile computing, which involves use of a portable wireless device (eg, a laptop or handheld computer or personal digital assistant [PDA]) to access a wireless local-area network (LAN) or the Internet.

How might this technology be used in a healthcare setting? Consider, for example, a clinician who has just furnished an inpatient service to a patient. Instead of entering a description of the service on a paper record at the patient's bedside to be transcribed and coded in the billing office, the clinician simply enters specific parameters of the service into a handheld mobile-computing device, which records the service and guides the clinician in the selection and entry of the appropriate code. Data from the handheld device automatically are sent to the legacy billing systems via the wireless network.

Recent reports suggest that the market for wireless information technology is poised for staggering growth in the near future. The international marketing consulting firm Frost and Sullivan predicts that the market for wireless LANs will climb from $120.1 million in 1999 to $350.3 million in 2006. [a] And a recent article in the New York Times estimates that in three years, one third of the world's 900 million wireless phones will be Internet-ready. [b]

Such predications make it advisable for healthcare financial managers to consider what wireless information technology means to health care and how they should prepare for its impact on health care. Important questions to ask include:

* When will the healthcare industry be ready for wide-scale implementation of wireless information technology and mobile computing?

* On what vendors, products, and other technologies does wireless information technology depend?

* What are the current healthcare-related applications for mobile computing, and what are the emerging applications?

* Who in a healthcare organization will most likely use these applications and for what purpose?

* When should a healthcare organization begin to seriously consider implementing mobile computing?

Overview of Wireless Technology