Vocera Communications announced an Apple watch app that will be available this summer from the Apple Watch App Store.
The app will allow clinicians and other health care users to view and respond to prioritized calls, alerts, and messages from health care team members, electronic health records (EHRs) and clinical systems, including critical lab values and STAT orders.
“I personally wanted a smartwatch because I wanted the info that was on my smartphone conveniently accessible on my wrist. It’s quick and you can immediately tend to things that are constantly beeping or alerting you on your smartphone, and be able to respond quickly,” Gautam Shah, vice president of product management at Vocera, told eWEEK. “When you think of a clinician and how many alerts they get on their smartphone and the clinical information they need to respond to, speed and efficiency matter.”
Shah said users will also be able to manage communications by and enable proper message routing by setting their availability. “It’s not just about getting alerts and info on their watch, it’s about having a platform so only the most important information gets to clinicians and the care team at the right time on their device of choice, and that’s something we’ve always been committed to,” he said.
The app also allows users to initiate panic calls in “man-down” emergency situations, and uses the Apple Watch Actionable Notification feature to deliver information directly to a user’s wrist.
“By definition, any device that goes into the health environment needs to be secure. In designing the first clinical communications app for the Apple Watch, we made sure it had the same thought process and level of security that we put into the rest of our platform and all our apps,” Shah said. “We had to find the right balance between security and convenience.”