Study Shows How Mobile Intelligence™ Clinic Helps Respond To Public Health Emergencies

A recent study funded by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that an iPod Touch-based platform and FDA’s Sentinel system could be used to accurately track the safety of drugs and vaccines dispensed during public health emergencies. The platform, called the Handheld Automated Notification for Drugs and Immunizations (HANDI), uses an application running on an iPod touch, fitted with a card reader and barcode scanner, to record patients’ information from a driver’s license. HANDI is the project name used by Denver Public Health for its customized implementation of Mobile Intelligence™ Clinic (see MI Clinci case study).

The goal of the study was to determine whether information gathered using the platform could be matched to electronic health records (EHR) within FDA’s Sentinel database as a means of monitoring the safety of medical products used in public health emergencies. According to the study (Using a Handheld Device for Patient Data Collection: A Pilot for Medical Countermeasures Surveillance), 

 “This investigation demonstrated that a handheld device is a feasible means of collecting patient identity and medical product receipt data. This capacity should be useful for safety surveillance of MCMs, particularly when dispensed in settings outside the traditional health-care delivery system.”

MI Clinic extends existing clinical systems to provide mobile data collection capabilities using customized and optimized workflows. As a result, MI Clinic can address a wide variety of clinical data collection use cases well beyond vaccinations. For more information, see MI Clinic product page.