New Imprivata Report Finds that Australian Hospitals Save More Than $1.2 Million AUD Annually with Shared-Use Mobile Devices, but Strategic Gaps Still Pose Security and Operational Risk

The 2025 Imprivata State of Shared Mobile Devices in Healthcare Report identifies the benefits as well as the challenges Australian healthcare organisations face when implementing shared-use mobile devices for clinical staff

MELBOURNE, Australia, Oct. 01, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Imprivata, a leading provider of access management solutions for healthcare and other mission-critical industries, today released new research which finds that each Australian healthcare facility that leverages shared-use mobile devices for its clinical staff saves an average of about $1,207,150 AUD annually versus using dedicated personal devices. Nearly all survey respondents (97%) agree that mobile devices are essential clinical tools, but significant security, operational, and workflow challenges persist due to the lack of a comprehensive strategy — more than half (53%) of organisations have not fully implemented a policy for managing shared-use mobile devices.

The “2025 State of Shared Mobile Devices in Healthcare Report” provides a comprehensive view of how hospitals and healthcare systems in Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US are using mobile devices in clinical care — and where gaps in security, user experience, and policy are limiting success. Research conducted by Vanson Bourne, which includes responses from 400 clinical and IT leaders in total (including 75 in Australia), reveals both the potential and the risks of using shared mobile devices in care delivery.

“Shared-use mobile devices are powerful tools to help streamline workflows, reduce inefficiencies, and allow clinicians to spend more of their time to patient care,” said Daniel Johnston, associate chief nursing informatics officer and director of clinical operations at Imprivata. “Yet realising this potential depends on effective device management. Our research shows that while both clinical and IT teams in Australia recognize the significant value of mobile technology in improving care delivery, many organisations are still working to determine the best way to scale these solutions.”

The benefits of shared-use mobile devices
Mobile technology is now considered foundational to Australian healthcare delivery organisations, and the primary clinical benefits of shared-use devices include improved access to clinical applications (as cited by 74% of respondents), increase mobility/flexibility (68%), and increased coordination and communication between clinical staff (61%).

A shared-use device model also has benefits for IT teams, including improved data security (according to 86% of respondents), increased alignment with regulations/compliance (64%), and improved asset management in locating lost mobile devices (64%)

In addition, nearly all (96%) of respondents think shared-use mobile devices deliver a greater ROI than individual-use or BYOD devices, resulting in an average annual savings of $1,207,150 per Australian healthcare facility. However, those organisations with a fully implemented strategy for managing shared devices report annual savings of about $1M (in-line with the global average), while those without a fully implemented strategy save about $524,000 annually, on average.

Lack of strategy creates security, workflow, and device management challenges
While shared-use devices deliver many benefits, more than half of healthcare organisations in Australia (53%) do not have a fully implemented policy for managing shared-use devices, resulting in challenges for both clinical staff and IT teams. These include concerns such as data security (according to 51% of survey respondents), lack of a centralised system for managing mobile devices (49%), and lack of visibility on mobile device usage (48%).

For clinical staff specifically, the biggest challenges they face with shared-use devices include getting locked out of mobile devices (as experienced to some extent by 92% of respondents), dealing with broken, uncharged, and/or misconfigured devices (92%) and missing or unavailable devices (95%).

These challenges result in potentially significant security gaps, with 83% of respondents stating that users share credentials when accessing shared mobile devices, and 77% revealing that shared-use mobile devices are frequently left signed in by staff after use. As a result, more than half of respondents (52%) say they are not completely confident that patient data is fully protected on shared-use mobile devices.

And, despite the inherent device-tracking advantages of shared-use vs. individual devices, facilities lose, on average, about 15% of their devices annually, resulting in delays in clinical communication (as cited by 58% of respondents), risk to patient data security (55%), and disruption to shift handover/documentation (52%).

“The difficulties organisations face with shared-use devices are expected at this early stage of adoption,” added Johnston. “What’s critical now is moving beyond ad-hoc solutions to a formal, robust strategy. Australian healthcare organisations need to combine strong identity and access management with enterprise-grade device management and workflow optimisation if they want to take full advantage of mobile devices at scale.”

Download the 2025 State of Shared Mobile Devices in Healthcare Report.

Methodology
For this global report, researchers surveyed 400 leaders from acute care facilities with 100+ beds across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The respondent pool consisted of 242 IT decision makers and 158 clinical leaders (including 75 respondents from Australia). Survey objectives included assessing current adoption and usage of shared-use mobile devices, exploring benefits across clinical, operational, and security domains, and identifying key challenges and barriers to effective implementation of shared-use mobile devices.

About Imprivata  
Imprivata delivers simple and secure access management solutions for healthcare and other mission-critical industries to ensure every second of crucial work is both frictionless and secure. Imprivata’s platform of innovative, interoperable access management and privileged access security solutions enable organisations to fully manage and secure all enterprise and third-party identities to facilitate seamless user access, protect against internal and external security threats, and reduce total cost of ownership. For more information, visit www.imprivata.com.     
  
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