The ongoing logistical and safety challenges of COVID-19 have put a necessary distance between clinicians and patients that disrupts typical modes of care.
But there is good news: Mobility efforts are supporting wider deployments of telehealth, virtual rounding and internal communications, whether it’s from a few feet away or hundreds of miles. Smartphones, tablets and handled mobile computers, among other tools, give clinicians a critical presence in remote and high-risk spaces.
A movement to equip clinicians on the go has been afoot for years. In fact, 97 percent of hospitals expect to send workflow notifications to staffers via mobile devices by 2022, according to a Zebra Technologies report released before the pandemic.
Still, the work required to acquire, provision, distribute and protect scores of these devices during a public health emergency is substantial and time-consuming — even for organizations with existing mobility programs. Simply maintaining the tools presents a task in itself.
Device as a Service — a subscription-based model for deploying mobile devices and endpoints — such as CDW’s Managed Endpoint Anywhere can help.
LEARN MORE: Download a white paper about Device as a Service capabilities.
DaaS Makes for a Smart Partnership
By taking the onus off in-house IT teams, organizations can redirect their focus while ensuring mobile devices are ready for anything. DaaS capabilities can support initial mobility deployments as well as on-demand service requests at any time.
The need is there: 63 percent of IT decision-makers say they could devote more time to other projects — such as security — if they spent less time on device management, a 2018 IDC survey found.
Perhaps more telling, more than half of the IDC respondents said they believe they spend too much time procuring and managing devices, and that lifecycle management optimization is a key area for improvement.
Organizations Can Rest Safe and Sound
DaaS partnerships can have financial benefits. Notably, they may be scaled up or down to avoid overspending or having too few devices on hand, and the vendor-agnostic approach cuts the costs and complexities of sourcing across brands.
This also saves organizations time: DaaS offers 24/7 access for troubleshooting as well as quick response to replace or repair devices across locations, giving your own staffers bandwidth for handling new and evolving tasks amid the pandemic.
As more mobile tools enter the care delivery ecosystem, keeping devices safe from cyberthreats couldn’t be more important.
DaaS providers can help by deploying unified endpoint management to secure and monitor their activities from a single interface, no matter where equipment is located.
They’re also key partners in ensuring software patches and updates are applied across your stable — and in taking on the arduous yet critical duty of upgrading outdated devices when the time comes.
These benefits bring more than peace of mind. Giving your clinicians the most current and best-suited devices for the jobs at hand ensures strong mobile care is delivered where and when it’s needed most.
