Phoenix Children's Hospital has announced that it will install 200 tablets in patient rooms to provide patients and their families with customized, interactive information about their treatment plan.
The hospital was awarded $200,000 from the James M. Cox Foundation to launch this initiative, called the "Connected Patient Project". The James M. Cox Foundation provides support for organizations in communities where media conglomerate Cox Enterprises operates its businesses.
Phoenix Children's Hospital will digitize its "Journey Boards", which are tools that help a child's family understand discharge instructions before they take their child home from the hospital. Currently, the instructions are printed out and distributed to patients and their families.
"For families, hospital stays can be a very intense and stressful time and it can be hard to retain information under those conditions," Teresa Boeger, director of the Division of Family Centered Care at Phoenix Children's Hospital, said in a statement. "Journey Boards help us ensure that comprehension is taking place and helps us identify gaps in understanding. We're excited about the success we've experienced with the Journey Boards and are looking forward to taking it to the next level with the use of technology."
Cox Communications will help Phoenix Children's Hospital create 21 Journey Board apps, which will be available in both English and Spanish. The hospital currently offers one that aims to help guide parents through their child's hospitalization. These tools will serve 13,000 patients annually, the hospital said.
Last year, MobiHealthNews found that 17 percent of the 205 hospital-branded apps in the Apple AppStore and Google Play store were developed by or for children’s hospitals. At the time, MobiHealthNews also noted children’s hospitals are also more likely to experiment with patient engagement initiatives since their patients are younger and thought to be in need of extra help in understanding their medical condition and procedures.
Earlier this year, Miami Children’s Hospital CIO Edward Martinez also said that the generation of parents that are bringing their children to the hospital now are more mobile-savvy than ever before.
“They want to have their information, and they want to have it now,” Martinez said. “So we feel that the engagement from that perspective — getting them engaged that early on — will get us a much better outcome earlier because they like the idea of being engaged on mobile and not face-to-face. They don’t like the face-to-face. They like texting, and they like to look it up on a handheld.”
