Mobile solutions for aged care: a transformational framework

Abstract

There is renewed interest in mobile technologies in aged care. While the technologies themselves emerged some decades ago, it is only now that some of the barriers to adoption are being overcome and implementation is seen as more practical and cost-effective. The interest in mobile technologies in aged care stems from the expectation that they will assist integration of information into clinical practice, and particularly for assisting clinicians at the point-of-care. Desktop-based systems have not been well adopted by hospital doctors and mobile technologies may better suit the work-practices of these and other mobile clinicians. There are expectations of efficiency gains from the introduction of mobile technologies in aged care. There is significant work to be done in developing the convincing business case for investment, applying project management rigor, preparing user interfaces, reviewing work-practices and otherwise exploring the changes and benefits of the technologies. Other issues to be explored include integration into the legacy environment, privacy and security. What is influencing the slow uptake of mobile solutions, especially in aged care, appears to be a framework to transform current business practices that are conducive to mobile business models. This research in progress paper provides an initial introduction to m-health, then analyses few existing e-business models and proposes framework that can transform current aged care businesses into an m-business. The paper also outlines a method to test the m-business transformation framework.