Imprivata, has released new research which finds that each UK healthcare facility saves an average of £522,000 annually by using shared-use mobile devices versus dedicated personal devices for clinical staff.
Most survey respondents (85 per cent) agree that mobile devices are essential clinical tools, however, nearly half (47 per cent) of organisations have not fully implemented a policy for managing shared-use mobile devices, resulting in security, operational, device management, and user experience challenges.
The “2025 State of Shared Mobile Devices in Healthcare Report” provides a comprehensive view of how hospitals and healthcare systems in the UK, Australia, Canada, and the US are using mobile devices in clinical care—and where gaps in governance, workflow, and policy are limiting success.
Research conducted by Vanson Bourne, which includes responses from 125 clinical and IT leaders across healthcare delivery organisations in the UK, reveals both the potential and the risks of using shared mobile devices in care delivery.
Daniel Johnston is associate chief nursing informatics officer and director of clinical operations at Imprivata.
He said: “Shared-use mobile devices represent one of the biggest opportunities to streamline workflows, save time, and improve patient care.
“Harnessing the power of shared mobile devices and ensuring rapid adoption amongst the clinical workforce will be driving how technology aligns with the needs of patients and clinicians alike to realise the NHS 10 year plan’s ambition of ensuring an NHS fit for the future.
“However, achieving these benefits requires effective device management, and this research reveals what we see at many organisations – clinical and IT staff alike recognise the tremendous value in using mobile devices to enhance the delivery of care, but they have not yet unlocked how to best optimise at scale.”
The benefits of shared-use mobile devices
Mobile technology is now considered foundational to UK healthcare, and nearly all (98 per cent) of survey respondents expect the use of shared mobile devices to increase in the next two years.
The primary clinical benefits of shared-use mobile devices include increased coordination and communication between clinical staff (as cited by 67 98 per cent of respondents), standardisation of workflows across teams (56 per cent), increased mobility/flexibility (56 per cent).
A shared-use device model for clinical staff also results in IT benefits, including greater visibility into mobile device usage and accountability (according to 69 per cent of respondents), improved asset management in locating lost mobile devices (65 per cent), and increased alignment with regulations/compliance (65 per cent).
In addition, 85 per cent of respondents think shared-use mobile devices deliver a greater ROI than individual-use or BYOD devices, resulting in an average annual savings of £522,000 per UK healthcare facility.
However, this is below the global average of £840,000 annually, suggesting UK organisations have the chance to better optimise their device utilisation and drive greater ROI.
Operational, security, workflow limitations
Despite the benefits of shared devices, many challenges exist for both clinical staff and IT teams.
These include concerns around data security (according to 47 per cent of respondents), inconsistent configuration (44 per cent) and lack of a reliable way to track mobile devices (40 per cent).
For clinical staff, workflow challenges include getting locked out of mobile devices (as experienced to some extent by 84 per cent of respondents), dealing with broken, uncharged, and/or misconfigured devices (86 per cent) and missing or unavailable devices (84 per cent).
These challenges result in potentially significant security gaps, with 77 per cent of respondents stating that users share credentials when accessing shared-use mobile devices, and 74 per cent revealing that shared-use mobile devices are frequently left signed in by staff after use.
As a result, 55 per cent are not completely confident that patient data is fully protected on shared-use mobile devices.
In addition, despite the device tracking advantages of a shared-use model, facilities still lose about 13 per cent of their mobile devices annually (or about 28 devices per facility per year), largely due to the lack of an implemented policy.
This has significant security and operational impact, including risk to patient data security, delay to communication, reduced production and increased staff frustration (all of which are cited by 48 per cent of respondents).
Johnston said: “The challenges that organisations face in managing and securing shared-use devices are not surprising given that the industry is at the early stages of adoption.
“To address these challenges and start to optimise the use of mobile devices in patient care, UK healthcare organisations must implement strong identity and access management, more robust device management, and strategies to streamline clinical workflows to deliver the highest standards of security and usability.”
