Mobile-izing Medicine: The Effect of Accessible Clinical Practice Guidelines on the Quality of Hospital Care

Lack of adherence to clinical practice guidelines is an important source of preventable medical errors. Nevertheless, lack of adherence to such guidelines, and clinical error more generally, is widespread in health care delivery today. One potential barrier to adherence is the fact that these guidelines are typically inaccessible at the point of care, precisely when they are most needed. The expansion of IT systems (e.g. electronic health records) in health care settings, as well as the propagation of mobile devices, has created a plausible way to overcome this barrier. In this study, researchers assess the impact of electronic access to practice guidelines to improve care, using the case of a mobile-based application called AgileMD. To do so, researchers assess adoption of the tool, use of the tool and, ultimately, clinical outcomes. Using detailed data and quasi-random variation, results from these analyses will lay the groundwork for a randomized controlled trial of the AgileMD tool.