Here at ONC, as we promote the use of information technology to improve clinical care, we also want to be responsive to new communications technology developments ourselves. There are new expectations that the federal government should deliver and receive digital information and services anytime, anywhere, and on any device. To help meet these expectations, and build a 21^st Century government that works better for the American people, the White House released the Digital Government Strategy.

One of the strategy’s three objectives that we at ONC take very seriously is to: Enable the American people and an increasingly mobile workforce to access high-quality digital government information and services anywhere, anytime, on any device. In particular, the strategy encourages agencies to optimize two services to more directly serve its customers through mobile devices – today that primarily means smartphones.

With that in mind, ONC is launching the Health IT Buzz blog mobile website. This new site will allow our stakeholders and site users to access health IT.gov and ONC updates, on their smartphone or mobile device, and allows ONC to move toward that goal of optimizing two services for mobile access.

Why We Went Mobile

One third of Americans now own a smartphone , and more and more people are using their mobile phones to access the Internet. Research shows that 17% of adults who own cell phones use them to do most of their online browsing, instead of their desktop computer. And, 81% of smartphone users  access the Internet on their mobile devices.

Smartphones are also being used by patients and health care providers to access a mobile website or application (app) for health purposes:

• Nearly 17 million consumers use mobile devices to access health information
• 56% of providers use smartphones and 25% use tablets for work
• 84% of physicians have a smartphone and 62% are going to abandon a website if it’s not mobile optimized

Based on our own evaluation of our website, health IT.gov, we know that some Buzz blog readers were having difficulty reading blog entries from their mobile phones. Thus, we’ve responded by mobile optimizing the Health IT Buzz blog to provide greater access to this resource. ONC’s social media properties—including Twitter , LinkedIn , YouTube , and Scribd —are already optimized for mobile phones, so this was a logical next step in making sure ONC’s online resources are available anytime, anywhere, and from any mobile device.

Mobile Blog Features

The mobile-friendly blog includes all of the same features as the desktop version of Health IT Buzz blog, with two additional actions buttons, which have been added at the end of each post to increase the discussion around health IT. These actions buttons are:

1. “Share Article,” which allows readers to distribute the blog post via social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and Google+)
2. “Save to Instapaper,” a simple tool to save Web pages for reading later

Readers visiting the Health IT Buzz blog from a mobile device will see the title of the three most recent blog posts on their screen. They can opt to switch off the mobile theme and view the desktop version instead by tapping on the “Off” button at the bottom of the page.

Gathering More information about Mobile Services

Please let us know what other services you would like to have mobile optimized in our ongoing effort to respond to the White House’s directive around mobile optimizing our digital services. Feel free to also share your comments in the “Leave a Reply” section below.

We look forward to hearing from you!