Thomas “T.J.” Fox is senior vice president of Wireless Business Sales & Operations for Verizon Wireless, leading wireless enterprise sales and operations, contract management, business operations and the Business/Government Customer Operations team. These teams work closely with the Verizon Enterprise Solutions global sales organization to provide large corporate and government customers with best-in-class technology solutions and communications products and services. Prior to this role, Fox led Wireless Enterprise Sales for Verizon Enterprise Solutions and was responsible for mobility sales, including Internet of Things-enabled solutions, for the company’s enterprise and mid-sized accounts, across numerous vertical industries.
What is the benefit of approaching healthcare with a Mobile First strategy?
What we’re seeing in the industry is that the demands placed on healthcare providers have never been higher. And these demands are not going away – they just continue to escalate. A mobile-first strategy allows healthcare providers to meet increasing regulatory and clinical demands head on. Innovation in mobility allows healthcare providers to optimize communications and provides evidence-based informatics to care teams when and where they need it. The fusion of clinical and operational workgroups within IT offers a streamlined approach to patient care. Patient data can be securely transported across mobile networks from beyond the four walls of a hospital, returning the data to providers and ultimately enabling better patient outcomes. Mobile technology gives healthcare providers a platform to communicate across the care continuum, improving operations and reducing costs.
How is Verizon uniquely positioned to best serve the healthcare market?
Healthcare providers have much more data, and many more data sources, than ever before. This data is absolutely no help if you can’t cost-effectively store, secure, analyze and access it to make intelligent care decisions, improve patient care and simplify processes. That requires a seamlessly aligned digital ecosystem that connects healthcare providers to patient data and applications - simply, securely and reliably – where and when it’s needed.
What sets Verizon apart in the healthcare industry is that our solutions are the foundational underpinning of many technology innovations being deployed in healthcare. Remote patient monitoring, telemedicine, disease management, health information exchange and care collaboration—none of these is possible without reliable connectivity, next-gen networking, real-time mobility and strong security. We understand that the needs of healthcare enterprises go beyond any one technology or solution – to succeed, you need a solutions provider that can tackle complex healthcare challenges with an end-to-end solution portfolio.
How can enabling clinicians with secure mobile data and applications help improve clinical outcomes?
As the Verizon 2015 Protected Health Information Data Breach Report reflects, data breaches around protected health information are a growing concern for healthcare. When it comes to patient data, balancing the need for strong security measures against the need for real-time mobile access can be challenging. Something as simple and flexible as text messaging can remove many barriers to care coordination and support clinical decision-making. The catch is that messages must be secure, so that an organization can mitigate the risk of a communication breach on their mobile devices. Verizon works with technology partners to provide healthcare organizations with the ability to utilize secure messaging. Secure messaging can also enable customers to quickly assemble care teams and improve timely and effective metrics like stroke response.
Beyond secure messaging, major health systems have adopted various strategies of observing patients when they are ready for discharge. In a recent project, Verizon worked with a health system to deploy a remote patient monitoring solution to reduce readmission rates for cardiac patients. Verizon and one of our technology partners implemented a process to remotely monitor weight and blood pressure for a select group of cardiac patients who had been recently been discharged from the hospital. In this study, the health system saw a reduction in readmission rates for the targeted population. As a next step, wearable devices can wirelessly deliver data back to a patient monitoring solution, where the data can be trended and analyzed by clinical staff. The ability to remotely capture and analyze patient data creates new value for both patients and healthcare provider – value that was completely unrecognized before the introduction of this technology.
How does mobility fit into the future of healthcare?
As I like to say, “The rate of change is changing.” From our perspective, mobile technology will continue to integrate into the clinical, operational and financial utilities of all aspects of healthcare. The future of mobile healthcare is incredibly broad. We expect to see huge growth in the Internet of Things and the use of wearables. Right now, we’re seeing the advent of smart grid technologies like temperature monitoring of pharmaceutical products being adopted by integrated delivery networks to reduce expenses and enhance campus operations. Home health workers can use video technology over a mobile device to evaluate patients in remote areas. Healthcare providers could potentially view secure patient health information from an EMR, lab, and image archiving systems on a mobile device simultaneously. Successful programs like the Emergency Telehealth and Navigation project deployed in Houston will continue to improve operations and control costs. We will continue to see the expansion of Video Directly Observed Therapies to treat patients, improving the communication gaps that can be so costly to public health. The possibilities are endless.
Consumers, patients and healthcare organizations want their data on demand, and at Verizon, we’re positioning ourselves at the center of mobile innovation. We see mobility as a force multiplier for accelerating ideas and helping them come to life. As an example, we recently announced Thingspace, which is an ecosystem where technology providers and customers can come together to design and enable out-of-the-box innovation with mobility as the foundation.
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About Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ) employs a diverse workforce of 177,700 and generated nearly $132 billion in 2015 revenues. Verizon operates America’s most reliable wireless network, with more than 112 million retail connections nationwide. Headquartered in New York, the company also provides communications and entertainment services over America’s most advanced fiber-optic network, and delivers integrated business solutions to customers worldwide.
For more information, visit www.verizonenterprise.com/industry/healthcare.
