A patient’s healthcare journey doesn’t begin and end at the hospital.
Care begins when an issue arises, such as a fall, a health flare-up or a caregiver’s concern, and continues after discharge, with patients recovering at home and staying connected to their care teams.
Today, where and how a patient receives care typically involve an array of places, people and devices. The journey can include smartphones, wearables, sensors, apps, medical devices and clinical systems—often with multiple handoffs along the way.
Care delivery is also changing for the people behind it. Clinicians and staff increasingly support patients both in person and virtually, moving with them across the journey.
When a patient’s well-being is at stake, every handoff and every moment matters, and having reliable, highly secure connectivity plays a significant role in supporting timely and effective care.
At this year’s HIMSS Global Health Conference and Exhibition, AT&T Business is bringing this end-to-end story to life at our booth, showcasing how connectivity, including our 5G network and FirstNet®—the only network built with and for public safety—can help keep patients, first responders, clinicians and caregivers connected from incident response through in-facility care and to recovery at home.
The impact across the journey is clear. Connected solutions can expand access and help close care gaps for patients, give caregivers on the front-line greater visibility and support, help clinicians streamline workflows amid staffing and workload pressures and enable healthcare systems to operate more efficiently.
Here’s what that connected patient journey can look like and the connectivity touchpoints that help enable faster intervention, more seamless care coordination and better patient outcomes.
The Incident: Connectivity turns a moment of risk into action
The journey begins with an older adult who’s living independently and actively managing their health at home with support from caregivers and clinicians. When an unexpected event occurs like a fall, missed medication or a sudden cardiac symptom, swift notification and clear communication are essential to help ensure assistance arrives quickly and improves the outcome.
Here’s how connectivity can support this critical moment:
- AT&T Connected Wearables can support emergency response with real-time health monitoring, location tracking and two-way communication, helping an individual request assistance quickly and enabling first responders to assess the situation sooner. Beyond emergencies, connected wearables can help reduce risk by tracking key health metrics like sleep, heart rate and other indicators that may provide early signals of a change in health status.
- AlertGPS empowers healthcare organizations to protect their front-line teams with real-time situational awareness in uncontrolled environments via connected wearable and/or a mobile app. The safety platform has intuitive features, management dashboards and reliable connectivity to support faster, informed decisions when caregivers need support most.
- FirstNet Fusion is our new game-changing mission-critical platform designed to connect teams across virtually any radio system or U.S. wireless carrier. By unifying push-to-talk, NextGen 9-1-1 dispatch and connected devices, it helps simplify communication, speed coordination and reduce response times when it matters most.
No matter the device or use case, the common thread is dependable connectivity. As the only carrier that connects people from the initial 911 call to car to crisis, we are helping ensure alerts, voice and location services are timely and reliable. Because during incident response, connectivity helps move the patient safely to the next phase of care.
In the Hospital: Connectivity keeps clinicians mobile and operations resilient
Upon arrival at the hospital, reliable connectivity is essential. Care teams need timely access to critical information and seamless communication as patient conditions can change rapidly. Clinicians need access to the right data at the right time, and hospitals require robust networks that support operations in every department from emergency to imaging to surgery. Behind the scenes, highly secure networks power thousands of connected devices, helping ensure efficient care and smooth hospital operations.
Here are examples of the connectivity foundations that keep hospitals running so clinicians can make faster, safer decisions:
- AT&T Dedicated Internet (ADI) provides fast, reliable network connectivity through a dedicated internet connection with ultra-low latency. This critical infrastructure helps hospitals and health systems keep critical operations and data-intensive, real-time applications like medical imaging, electronic medical records (EMRs) and clinical workflows running when performance and uptime matter most. ADI can also include proactive threat defense through AT&T Dynamic Defense®, which offers business-grade enhanced internet security that integrates seamlessly with your existing infrastructure, helping protect sensitive data in your environment and helping maintain peak performance.
- AT&T Internet Air for Business provides fixed wireless connectivity that can be especially valuable when fiber isn’t available in remote or temporary locations or when you want backup connectivity. With predictable pricing and easy setup, it can support essential applications like EMRs and help maintain continuity without costly installations.
- Cisco Meraki MG52 is a 5G fixed wireless access device and cloud-managed cellular gateway designed to provide high-speed, reliable and secure WAN connectivity. Featuring eSIM capabilities, it enables healthcare organizations to quickly deploy fast, reliable connectivity across diverse environments—such as telehealth, IoT monitoring, remote clinics, mobile units, and disaster recovery—to support critical communications.
- High Power User Equipment (HPUE) like the Sonim MegaConnect™ and other FirstNet MegaRange solutions can boost signal power up to 6x, providing superior connectivity penetration deep in concrete buildings, elevators, basements and parking garages. And since HPUE is only available on Band 14 spectrum, we are the only provider capable of delivering this critical connectivity to hospitals across the United States.
Inside the hospital, the network is no longer “just IT.” Connectivity is an essential infrastructure for how care is delivered, how teams coordinate and how facilities stay resilient, so clinicians can focus on the patient in front of them and help them move to the next stage: recovery.
Recovery: Connectivity extends care into the home and supports quality of life
After treatment, discharge isn’t the end of the patient journey. At home, patients managing recovery need to monitor progress and remain connected with their care teams. Connected healthcare extends support beyond the hospital, enabling proactive care and promoting independence and quality of life.
Caregivers often take on the greatest responsibility during this stage. Remote monitoring and virtual support help reduce readmissions, detect changes sooner and ensure continuous care between visits.
Here are a few ways connected healthcare solutions can help make care at home possible:
- The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), including smart scales, blood pressure cuffs, cellular-enabled ECGs, thermometers and glucometers, can help bring real-time data and remote monitoring into the home.
- Mynd Immersive, a pioneer in immersive healthcare, is helping redefine what connected care can look like for older adults and Veterans. Through immersive technology designed to support cognitive, physical and emotional well-being, Mynd creates powerful moments of exploration, connection and engagement. Powered by AT&T’s reliable 5G connectivity, these experiences can be delivered seamlessly in hospital environments, long-term care communities and for individuals aging in place.
- Smart Meter, LLC, the leader in cellular-enabled remote patient monitoring (RPM) data and devices, facilitates better patient outcomes through solutions enabling reimbursable RPM for chronic conditions.
Recovery is where connected care can truly become continuous care, supporting patients and caregivers long after a hospital visit ends, helping them stay healthy and reducing the need for readmission.
Connectivity is the thread that connects the entire journey
From incident response to hospital care and at-home recovery, the modern patient journey relies on fast, reliable and highly secure connectivity. AT&T delivers essential infrastructure that supports every step, helping enable better patient outcomes, empowering caregivers and clinicians and allowing healthcare systems to operate efficiently.
The connected patient journey proves that connecting changes everything—for patients, caregivers and the healthcare systems that support them.
