A Systematic Approach to Analyze the Optimization Potential for ICT-Tools Supporting Collaborative Work Processes in Healthcare

Over the past, the continuous increase of medical knowledge in combination with a high number of medical and technological innovations has lead to an enormous quality improvement in healthcare. But this development also requires a professional staff specialization resulting in an increased fragmentation and division of the entire patient treatment processes to individual specialists and/or departments. Therefore the improvement potential associated with the introduction of modern Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supporting the cooperation of all involved medical actors seems to be obvious. However, in reality the majority of such ICT-Tools does not meet those high expectations. A major reason for this is often an insufficient functionality directly resulting from an inadequate user integration into the development process. In this context a systematic analysis approach has been developed for the identification of optimization potential for ICT-Tools supporting collaborative work processes in healthcare based on a participatory analysis of the underlying medical treatment processes and a cooperative functionality definition. In a first investigative study this system ergonomic analysis approach was tested for the identification of the existing optimization potential for a web-based patient record to be introduced into the pre-, in- and post-hospital treatment processes of an emergency abdominal surgery. Together with the involved medical users a total number of 11 functionality requirements have been identified being essential for a systematic improvement of the underlying communication and coordination processes, whereas an improvement of the shared knowledge was rather less important for the later users. However, a broader optimization of web-based patient records in general will only be possible when also the treatment processes of different patient groups are taken into account.