The feasibility of using ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) technology for electronic data capture in multicentre medical audit and research

Abstract

SummaryLarge-scale audit and research projects demand robust, efficient systems for accurate data collection, handling and analysis. We utilised a multiplatform 'bring your own device' (BYOD) electronic data collection app to capture observational audit data on theatre efficiency across seven hospital Trusts in South Yorkshire in June-August 2013. None of the participating hospitals had a dedicated information governance policy for bring your own device. Data were collected by 17 investigators for 392 individual theatre lists, capturing 14 148 individual data points, 12 852 (91%) of which were transmitted to a central database on the day of collection without any loss of data. BYOD technology enabled accurate collection of a large volume of secure data across multiple NHS organisations over a short period of time. Bring your own device technology provides a method for collecting real-time audit, research and quality improvement data within healthcare systems without compromising patient data protection.

Bring-your-own-device in medical schools and healthcare facilities: A review of the literature (Preprint)

“…After deduplication and iterative review of abstracts and full texts, 14 articles were identified as meeting the inclusion criteria, 8 of which were original research articles [9,[17][18][19][20][21]26,39]. Five were magazines articles (all coming from the USA) [16,[22][23][24]27] and one a viewpoint journal article [25]. All the publications were from high-income countries as follows: nine from the USA [9,16,19,20,[22][23][24]27,39], two from the UK [25,26], two from Canada [17,18] and one from Ireland [21].…”

“…Five were magazines articles (all coming from the USA) [16,[22][23][24]27] and one a viewpoint journal article [25]. All the publications were from high-income countries as follows: nine from the USA [9,16,19,20,[22][23][24]27,39], two from the UK [25,26], two from Canada [17,18] and one from Ireland [21]. The identified review articles were published between 2012 and 9 2016: one in 2012 [20], two in 2013 [23,27], five in 2014 [16,17,21,24,25], two in 2015 [19,22], and four in 2016 [9,18,26,39].…”

“…Mobile device embedded keypads can lead to issues of poor data entry, while device small screen size can contribute to issues of compromised and complicated data and image viewing [16,23,25].…”

“…Other recommended interventions include: device automatic log-off when inactive [9], password protection [18,21], advanced encryption [22,27], antivirus and malware software protection [22], and prompt reporting of lost or stolen devices [22]. A prohibition of the following activities was also recommended as interventions for data security: file batch downloading, family usage of PHI active devices, storage of PHI in mobile devices [16,25], unsecure text messaging [16], and installation of free apps on PHI mobile devices [22]. Furthermore, there were also recommendations for the regulation of mobile device access to PHI [16], period for device PHI storage [23], copy data, print screen functionality, and cloud services backup [9].…”

“…These challenges are in most cases attributable to lack of technologies and systems for managing communication [16,23,24], network controls [7,10], and education [4,17,18,25]. Nonetheless, the lack of guidance in the form of BYOD policies [20,26,27] or mobile device use policies 4 [9,10] and regulations [25] remains a challenge for medical schools and healthcare facilities; hence a strong suggestion for enactment of policies as measures for ensuring effective BYOD implementation [16,23,28,29]. However, there seems to be a paucity in the literature on BYOD policy development, policy evaluation, and evaluation of mobile device implementation projects [3,30].…”