CSCW-based system development methodology for health-care information systems

Health-care organizations are now moving toward integrated delivery systems to provide high-quality care, as they are being held to an ever-increasing scope of accountabilities. Distributed applications such as telemedicine and electronic patient records (EPR) are seen as key requirements for the future to deliver cost effective and high-quality health-care services. This initiative would provide dynamic environments for health professionals to access patient information and thereby increase the decision-making capacities on patient care procedures. Although telemedicine applications and EPR contribute to the improvement of healthcare services, poor communication mechanisms and practices negatively impact on quality of service (QoS) in teamwork environments of patient care. Awareness and responsiveness are becoming important factors in dynamic group collaborative work environments in healthcare facilities. This paper reports on a detailed case study of group communication patterns in a patient service environment. Further, an ethnographic approach that addresses group communications patterns, identifies tools and techniques in light of Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW), which requires the application of a number of disciplines including sociology, organizational science, psychology, and computer science. In cooperative work environments, it is important to understand the activities of others for human interaction and communication in general. This is very important for future development of CSCW-based distributed architectures that focus on the challenges of improving QoS in healthcare environments.