Despite all the surrounding hype, healthcare IT leaders are expressing sincere doubts about the effectiveness of consumer-grade tablets like the iPad in a clinical setting. A recent study from Rockville, Md.-based BizTechReports, an independent research and reporting agency, found 66 percent of healthcare IT executives say consumer-based tablets create governance challenges for their organizations.

BizTechReports, which interviewed 100 executives and IT professionals within hospitals, cited security, durability and EHR compliance as other reasons for the hesitation surrounding commercial tablets in healthcare. Sponsored by electronics manufacturer Panasonic, the research included a whitepaper, which outlined how a regulated industrial environment isn’t exactly the most welcoming one for consumer-grade tablets.

Other studies, such as a recent physician-based one from SpyGlass Consulting Group (Menlo Park, Calif.), confirms a reluctance in hospitals when it comes to tablets. Both reports say at the heart of the issue is a struggle within hospitals between the IT side and physicians.  Approximately 75 percent of the physician respondents in the SpyGlass study say hospital IT directors are reluctant to support mobile devices because of security and cost reasons.

Lane Cooper, editorial director for BizTechReports, found a similar issue. “The challenge that we outlined in the study, that the numbers revealed, was that you have a lot of pressure from physicians, who are not only intelligent but powerful within a hospital setting, because they are getting a tremendous amount of benefit from leveraging the user-interface that these consumer tablets bring to the tablet,” he notes. “But what’s difficult for them to adhere is the pushback from the IT side which has concerns about governance, risk, and security.”

Healthcare Informatics Assistant Editor Gabriel Perna recently spoke with Cooper about the specifics of the study. Here are excerpts from that interview.

Explain exactly what are the governance challenges facing healthcare IT leaders when it comes to tablets?

Governance is about the rules of the road. The policies you put in place, so you can play the game. It sets boundaries of what you can and cannot do. And in the world of healthcare, some of the most important boundaries over the last decade have been driven by HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Actof 1996), which is trying to accomplish two seemingly incompatible objectives: ensuring data that can be shared, but also to protect the data to make sure the privacy of the patients is secure. That is a high-wire act for someone trying to put together governance that complies with those rules.

In order to accomplish that, you need to put in automated procedures that give you a reasonable expectation that data is not leaking, that only the people who need to see can see it, and that it can move across enterprise boundaries. Those governance rules are meant to limit risk. And when you introduce consumer technologies that are not designed to support these governance rules then you have a problem. And you have a market problem when the people responsible for your business [physicians] are not aligned with those governance rules.

I can imagine they [physicians] can be frustrated by different governance rules, especially when working for multiple organizations, and they basically just want to do their jobs. And they’ve found the innovation that these consumer devices provide can give them a lot of flexibility on how they can access and share information with their patients. However, it brings them out of compliance with the governance rules set in place by specific organizations, which in turn, brings the organization out of compliance with these major rules around privacy and security of data.

It almost sounds like HIPAA is kind of holding back these tablets. Is that a fair thing to suggest?

It depends on what you choose to call the dog and what you chose to call the tail. Devices like the iPad are a tool, and HIPAA is a rule designed to protect patients and hospitals and provide guidance on how the patient data can move and still be protected. From my point-of-view, I would look at it from the opposite perspective. I would say these consumer technologies, while they have the status of consumer technology, represent a threat to a core element in a healthcare organization’s portfolio activities, which is not only to provide the best healthcare outcome at a low cost, but to protect the data and information flow. Should the burden lie with regulations to support a consumer tool or should the tools evolve to meet the requirements of these important legislative developments?

Moving on from privacy, what are some of the inter-operational challenges with the tablet and electronic medical records (EMRs)?

A lot of these consumer technologies, they are designed to work in a web-enabled environment. The systems that hospitals have in place today, especially established organizations, they have many generations of legacy systems that were not designed with a web-interface in mind. There are just speaking a different language. So there’s just an inter-generational challenge between getting access to the data.

The study and whitepaper mention the iPad a lot, why does it seem the iPad is singled out?

It’s synonymous; it’s a function of their being first to market, and by a long-shot, being the primary platform in which the IT community is being exposed to the consumerzation of IT. It’s because they were so good at what they did.

In what other ways are tablets not equipped yet for a medical environment?

The whole issue revolves around the term, “consumerization.” It’s a consumer technology that’s trying to be applied in not only an industrial environment, but one that is very regulated…And it goes beyond the security issues we’ve talked about. There are things like, can you wipe it clean? As you go from patient room to another, can the physical structure of that device, which is not an industrial device, be wiped and kept clean so you’re passing along something bad. In a hospital environment, you’re not working at a table top; you’re in a very fluid environment, where a lot of the solid surfaces are on wheels. So it’s easy for things to fall off and break. From an IT perspective, with these devices $500-600 a piece, are they worth replacing five-to-six times because you’ve dropped it or damaged it?

[In the study] No one was saying that the iPad or any other mobile device is bad, the question is: Are they appropriate, and have they been designed to address the risks and environment in which they are being brought?