You may know AT&T for wired and wireless telecommunications, infrastructure, and disaster recovery. You may not have known, however, that AT&T has formed a healthcare practice and is taking a more active role in helping healthcare organizations make strategic decisions about remote access, telemedicine, home health, and mobile worker support. We spoke with Laura Johnson, executive director of AT&T’s Industry Solutions Group.

Describe AT&T’s involvement in healthcare.

About four and a half years ago, we started down this path of developing our vertical industry practice. We worked with an outside consultant to research several industries, specifically looking at their business processes for mobile workers. We identified nine vertical industries in which to develop a go to market plan and healthcare was prioritized in this research.

We initially started with a focus on the electronic patient record and specifically e-prescribing. We knew it was early in the life cycle in terms of adoption because hospitals had to first create the patient records electronically to be able to access them on wireless devices.

Much of our early success has been in home healthcare and with the healthcare nurses who work in the field. They need to schedule their day, find their patients’ location, and then enter information, capturing in real time the patient assessment. That information is then sent back to the homecare agency or hospital and the reimbursement process begins immediately.

We have a dedicated healthcare marketing and sales team who work with healthcare customers to identify business process and workflow where wireless data can bring efficiency. Our application consultants then can best recommend the right solution for their requirements.

Hospitals use many technologies to communicate within the four walls and with their physicians. What services does the market want that AT&T can provide?

There are a several applications we think help providers begin to move to mobile applications and encourage clinician adoption. One is Enterprise Paging. If you think about historical paging applications that physicians have used, they had to carry a wireless device and a pager. What we offer is an enterprise-grade application that runs directly on a wireless device. It allows them to integrate into their back-end systems and receive alerts on their mobile device directly from the enterprise system. Clinicians have a pager and their voice solution all in one device.

We also have a product called Office Reach. It extends PDX functionality to wireless devices. When the staff dials a four-digit hospital extension, if that contact isn’t at their desk, the call automatically rolls out to their wireless device. By dialing one number the caller can reach the recipient on campus or beyond.

More specific to home healthcare is our LaptopConnect offer. AT&T provides mobile broadband to home healthcare clinicians to send and receive data from their laptop wherever they are throughout the day. Field staff can complete encounter information on their laptop and wirelessly transmit the completed forms for immediate processing.

We worked with AMR to design an EMR for their field clinicians and first responders in ambulances. While in transit and assessing the patient, the patient data can be entered into a laptop from the ambulance and transmitted to the hospital. When the ambulance arrives, the patient’s assessment information has already been transmitted and the attending physician can immediately begin treatment.

How is mobile broadband working for remote caregivers and what are the options for them?

We see a mix. Initially, we saw greater adoption of laptops with wireless cards which provided caregivers access to AT&T’s mobile broadband network to send and receive information while in the field. Wherever there is voice access, they also have data access to get on the Internet, to access applications, and to be able to transmit patient data while at the point of care.

We are seeing an increased demand for wireless PDAs for those users who don’t require a full screen and keyboard – but can select answers from a pull down menu and perform some data entry. McKesson Horizon Homecare is a good example of an application that operates on wireless devices – both PDAs and laptops. Homecare Homebase is exclusively deployed in the field on handheld devices.

AT&T’s mobile broadband network is available in over 250 major metropolitan markets - giving users the speed they need to quickly transmit information.

What’s going on with the iPhone in healthcare?

iPhone was initially made available to consumers. Just recently AT&T offered the iPhone for enterprises on their corporate contracts. Convergence is definitely a big topic with hospitals, being able to have a single device like the iPhone that has Wi-Fi and cellular support is of interest. Apple recently announced the upcoming availability of an SDK for the iPhone for developers to build applications specifically for this device.

On a related note, in the hospital setting, one challenge is that many of the physicians buy their own device through consumer channels but they want access to the enterprise system as well. With the Stark law, there’s sensitivity about what services and technologies the hospitals offer their affiliated physicians, but at the same time, there’s also this need to build a relationship with the physicians. So, we see hospitals wanting to provide the ability for those customers, their physicians, to be able to get access to a device the physician has selected as their primary device.

AT&T offers programs whereby a hospital can elect split billing for network time. The hospital is billed for data and the physician is billed separately for voice. Additionally, provider organizations can extend their corporate discount to employees – allowing them to purchase the device of their choice at the discount provided to the organization. This is a good program for hospitals, to be able to offer some differentiation of devices and services and can help IT steer the clinicians towards specific devices they are more willing to support.

Doctors were supposed to love PDAs and their manual synching of data, which flopped. Is this Version 2.0 of that, with a device with at least as much computing power, but also part of the network?

Absolutely. It is about having real-time access to patient information and decision support regardless of where they are during the day. Physicians are not only inside the hospital,, but also at clinics, their office, on-call, and roaming between care settings. They need to remain available for contact and they need the ability to have a device that provides them real time access to voice and data. There is increasing demand to get real-time access to patient information and be able to send updates back into the medical record regardless of where the physician is throughout the day.

What services do you offer that CIOs may not have thought about?

We just recently released AT&T Video Share. It’s an emerging application for businesses. Users can take and send live video from their mobile device – allowing another mobile phone user to see exactly what they are seeing. A home healthcare nurse at a patient’s home can send a video of the patients wound to a physician and get a recommendation on the spot or determine whether the patient needs to come to the hospital for further evaluation or treatment. The nurse and physician can have a live conversation while viewing the video together. We’re in the early stages of seeing what other healthcare applications can benefit from Video Share. Customers can see the value and have already asked for enhancements such as transmitting the video to a PC, or to other mediums so they can share the video. We expect this application to expand with the growth of telehealth.

Companies are making huge investments in remote monitoring, alerting, and alarming. Is that the last frontier of healthcare, taking those services out to where the patients are instead of having them come to you?

That’s true. You have big companies like Philips, GE, and QualComm developing telehealth solutions. We’re having conversations with a number of vendors in this area because we see this as an emerging market with great growth potential. Healthcare provider organizations are looking for ways to decrease the cost of care and better manage patients through their discharge planning.

We have participated in disease management pilot programs and will continue to explore the applications being brought to market. With continued participation in pilot programs, we can better understand the customer requirements and pinpoint the high demand areas for these types of products. Some of these emerging applications will be offered directly to consumers, some through hospitals and some through payors.

What’s your mechanism to get at the table with those making decisions in hospitals?

HIMSS Analytics recently reported that up to 30% of healthcare IT initiatives are focused on mobility. CIOs are not expecting us to just come and talk about wireless devices. They want to sit down and talk to us about wirelessly enabling business and workflow processes to bring efficiency, patient safety and cost savings into their hospital. They are also exploring ways to encourage clinician adoption of technology.

We’ve made changes over the years in our business to support those types of conversations. First, as I mentioned earlier, we worked with an outside consultant to assess the healthcare industry and interview healthcare decision makers to identify those business processes that would benefit most from wireless enablement. This provided us with the foundation to begin a conversation around areas that we knew would benefit the hospital. Second, we hired industry specialists in marketing and sales who come from the healthcare technology industry and can really speak to the needs of provider organizations. And we’re expanding our national healthcare sales organization. Additionally, we have highly skilled and trained mobility application specialists and enterprise architects who can have a deep dive conversation on applications and technology.

We also partner very closely with the healthcare IT clinical and enterprise systems vendors as well as wireless ISVs whose applications are integrated to better deliver end to end solutions.

What are you hearing from your healthcare executive advisory committee?

They provide us insight into what’s happening in this particular industry with their thought leadership. They give us a good pulse in where mobility investments will be focused for them and other healthcare executives. Top of mind for them currently are requirements for capturing data wherever the point of care, integrating devices, disaster recovery, emergency preparedness, business continuity, and telemedicine . These are considered strategic areas of focus for these CIOs.

This advisory committee also looks to AT&T to bring together our portfolio of technologies and services in a meaningful way for their unique business needs. So topics like FMC are also top of mind for these CIOs.

I wasn’t aware that AT&T offers an enterprise recovery service. What does that involve?

We’ve put together a full suite of disaster recovery subsystems, including offsite operations centers and data centers, along with fully engineered telecommunications backup facilities to assist our customers.

So, for example, we will bring in a cell site on wheels in the case where there’s a disaster. We have back-up if there are any issues with damaged cell sites. We do that regularly. We have a whole task team that immediately is deployed and brings those infrastructures into place from a wireless perspective.

The FCC’s grant program shows that the government thinks that telehealth is important, setting aside money for regional broadband networks in rural areas.

We’ve actually just appointed a task team to see how AT&T can help our customers apply for these grants. There’s a commitment by the federal government to fund telemedicine networks throughout the country. That initial investment was supposed to be $100 million over two years, but it’s now $417 million over three years. There will be 69 awards.

How do you work with partners?

We have an ecosystem of partners that we work with in healthcare. These partners align with the prioritized business processes where wireless brings efficiency, including wireless ISVs who have developed specific applications around those business processes. PatientKeeper, MercuryMD, Epocrates, McKesson, Homecare Homebase and Emergin are key partners of ours in the healthcare segment. It’s important for us to understand these applications and assist our customers in identifying the right solution for their needs.

We have a broad data developer program where partners receive a certification for their wireless applications on our network. Our program also provides technical support for our partners as they develop mobile applications. These application providers are promoted on our website and our sales team is always updated on new certified partners in the program. We partner with ISVs and device manufactures to educate industry decision makers on wireless solutions and their benefits. These marketing programs include webinars, industry events and much more. We also jointly participate in customer meetings.

We always feature partner applications in our booth at industry events. You’ll see a number of these applications demonstrated in our booth during HIMSS.

We’ve taken some first steps at reselling some wireless applications in certain verticals. So, in the categories where it makes sense, we’ll partner in a very real way to sell, bill, and support an application through our direct sales force.

How do you summarize to a CIO what AT&T brings to the table?

AT&T has deep knowledge and experience in the healthcare industry to understand where wireless data adds value to their business processes. We can bring the resources, the assets, and the partnership to the table to orchestrate the right solution.

Fast Facts

Products and Services
Enteprise Paging, Video Share, OfficeReach, Laptop Connect, Enterprise on Demand, Commercial Connectivity Services, Wireless WAN Connectivity, NetMotion Mobility, Integrated Laptops, Wireless Email and Messaging Solutions, Push To Talk, TeleNav,TeleNav Track, Emergin

Company
AT&T
Healthcare Industry Solutions
16331 NE 72nd Way
Redmond, WA 98052
http://www.corp.att.com
Tammi DeVore, Senior Healthcare Marketing Manager
425.580.6658
tammi.devore@att.com

Notable Customers
Jupiter Medical Center (FL), VNA of Florida, American Medical Response, St. Luke’s Health System, Rush University Medical Center, Yale New Haven Health Services, Evanston Northwestern, North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance, Baptist Health (FL), Baptist Health (AR)

The Bottom Line
* Wireless communications and a remote connectivity strategy to access information in new ways and in new places which can help organizations drive successful clinician relationships.
* Contact AT&T for a free Healthcare Wireless Workshop that will help you assess your network requirements and capabilities as you implement your HIT initiatives.
* AT&T is the voice and data networking provider chosen by the American Hospital Association after an 18-month review process.

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