Abstract:
Health-care professionals have a broad range of needs for information and cooperation
while working at different points of care (e.g., outpatient departments, wards, and
functional units such as operating theaters). Patient-related data and medical knowledge
have to be widely available to support high-quality patient care. Furthermore, due
to the increased specialization of health-care professionals, efficient collaboration
is required. Personal mobile information tools have a considerable potential to realize
almost ubiquitous information and collaborative support. They enable to unite the
functionality of conventional tools such as paper forms, dictating machines, and pagers
into one tool. Moreover, they can extend the support already provided by clinical
workstations. An approach is described for the integration of mobile information tools
with heterogeneous hospital information systems. This approach includes identification
of functions which should be provided on mobile tools. Major functions are the presentation
of medical records and reports, electronic mailing to support interpersonal communication,
and the provision of editors for structured clinical documentation. To realize those
functions on mobile tools, we propose a document-based client-server architecture
that enables mobile information tools to interoperate with existing computer-based
application systems. Open application systems and powerful, partially wireless, hospital-wide
networks are the prerequisites for the introduction of mobile information tools.
Keywords
Hospital Information Systems - Mobile Information Tools - Clinical Workstations -
Computer-supported cooperative work
