Doctors, medical offices using smartphones, struggling with email archiving

Posted on July 28th, 2010 under Proposed Laws and Compliance Regulations, Messaging Technology

With more medical offices incorporating mobile technologies, problems have begun to arise with storage solutions.

A recent report compiled by Spyglass Consulting Ground found 94 percent of doctors are currently using smartphones to communicate with other co-workers in addition to managing healthcare and controling workflow. This presents a problem with storage, though, as many healthcare organizations are without email archiving solutions that can effectively store such communication.

The report states many healthcare organizations "lack automated tools to manage ... electronic mail." Thus, it has become the doctor's responsibility to manually upload digital communication to archives at a later point, which essentially eliminates any increased productivity the smartphones have provided, by creating additional work for the medical practitioners. In many cases, emails that should regularly be saved are being deleted, which could lead to fines at a later point if the organization is presented with a lawsuit.

Other industries have witnessed such fines handed down by governing regulatory authorities. Both Merrill Lynch and investment bank Piper Jaffray received heavy penalties from their governing bodies for failing to produce requested email correspondence.