Critical communications roundup: Mobility Eedition

Welcome to the second edition of Everbridge’s Critical Communications Roundup. This month, our team continues to focus on providing you with resources that demonstrate the important role that enterprise mobility plays in critical communications. As you know, your workforce is increasingly mobile, and organizations require solutions to reach them quickly, effectively and securely. This process is especially magnified in a critical situation–a power outage at your warehouse, or a code error alert on your hospital floor, for instance. When time is of the essence, you need to reach your employees (and customers) wherever they may be–and increasingly, it’s on their mobile phone.

This mix of urgency and reach has always been Everbridge’s sweet spot. However, with the recent launch of Everbridge’s new secure mobile communications application, HipaaChat, mobility now plays an even more significant role in the way that our customers communicate securely and contextually.

With that in mind, let’s take a look some other recent, newsworthy developments. What other mobile trends are proliferating the workplace? How are they changing the way we work? Provide patient care? Let’s take a look, and as always, we hope you join in the conversation, too.

The Future of Medicine is in Your Smartphone: At this point, you might think the world is used to the increasingly dramatic capabilities of mobile phones, but according to the Wall Street Journal, a series of new patient-focused apps are bringing the fundamentals of healthcare right to the consumer…and it’s fascinating. But, how does it work? Say you have developed a rash. You can download the right app, snap a photo, and your phone will analyze it in real time. Concerned about your ears? You can purchase an attachment that will be able to tell you whether or not you have an infection. Moreover, healthcare professionals are getting involved in the mHealth revolution through the continued emergence of Telemedicine (physicians, for example, can use HipaaChat to conduct video consultations with their patients).

Report: Most physicians use BYOD smartphones, but lack support from hospital IT departments: Personal mobile devices are becoming more and more prevalent in the workplace as they become increasingly central to our lives. Even doctors and nurses use personal tablets to deliver and display x-ray and test results to patients. But, according to Mobi Health News, despite the emergence of trends like Telemedicine, many healthcare professionals are not provided with the IT support needed to ensure that these devices function effectively at all times. Lacking an IT admin dashboard, or other technical support and compliance functionalities, the BYOD approach can fall short and make it harder for IT departments to monitor problems and stay on top of the issues that might arise (not too mention the latent security issues related to BYOD). As a result, while mobile is poised to do great things for hospitals and their staffs, and other businesses of all types, a lack of IT support can hinder momentum. Once again, enterprise-ready tools like HipaaChat can help, but so can a forward-looking hospital IT department.

Lack of enterprise mobility experience could cost you that dream job: With changes in technology and business also emerges a change in expectations. Over at Fierce Mobile IT, Caroline Wall discusses the increasing importance of enterprise mobility, not just for the organization, but for the candidate as well. As more organizations become interested in the possibilities of mobile, recruiters are becoming less interested in candidates who seem like they would be unprepared to keep pace with the systematic business and consumer computing shift from desktop to mobile. While this applies more specifically to developers, it’s a concept that can be applied to any job function that relies on expressing, or tapping in to, the value of enterprise mobile, mobile applications and mobile collaboration.

What other mobile trends stories have caught your eye? What are your businesses’ key enterprise mobility goals for 2023? Let us know!