Högskolan i Skövde

Aims: To explore on how patients experience the information exchange with healthcare organizations and how this relates to the six areas that constitute good quality care.Method: A qualitative approach inspired by Grounded Theory was adopted. Seven interviews with patients were carried out in the homes of patients.Conclusion: Healthcare does not always meet the requirements of Health and Medical Services Act with regard to good quality health. An effective exchange of information between health professionals and patients was found as a key issue for creating the conditions for good quality care.

Healthcare processes require the cooperation of different healthcare providers and medical disciplines. In such an environment, the quality and safety of care rely heavily on the ability to exchange information from one software to another, and from one person to another. However, information systems that support a seamless flow of information along healthcare processes are not broadly used in healthcare environments. Usually, healthcare organizations have their own autonomously developed information systems that do not support the cooperation of different organizational units and medical disciplines. This has led to the fragmentation of the patients’ information in proprietary heterogeneous systems across healthcare organizations. The aim of this paper is to: (1) explore how healthcare practitioners´ in Sweden experience information system support in their daily work activities, and (2) present and illustrate how key design principles of a process support system prototype can support healthcare practitioners in their work practice. An important conclusion from this research is that a process support as the one described in this paper creates new opportunities to organize and coordinate healthcare

Healthcare organizations are increasingly becoming dependent on knowledge management activities to improve the quality of care, to maintain a high level of efficiency and innovation as well as to flexibly adapt to raid change. Utilizing knowledge management support systems - e.g. Internet based knowledge portals - to manage medical information and healthcare knowledge aimed to support the full spectrum of knowledge needs has become an important issue for all healthcare professionals. This paper reports on the main findings from analyzing the characteristics and challenges of 15 Swedish knowledge portals containing healthcare information. The analysis is based on inspection of the portals and interviews with their owners. The main challenges found concern fragmentation of knowledge, structuring of knowledge content, usability, interaction and resources for maintaining knowledge content. Future successful development and use of knowledge portals to disseminate healthcare knowledge depend on addressing these challenges, which requires portal owners to have a long-term strategy as well as a systematic way of working.

This paper presents and illustrates the main features of a proposed process oriented approach for patient information distribution in future healthcare information systems by using a prototype of a process support system. The development of the prototype was based on Visuera method which includes five various steps. The results indicate that a visualised prototype is a suitable tool for illustrating both the opportunities and constraints of future ideas and solutions in eHealth. The main challenges for developing and implementing a fully functional process support system are both on a technical and organisational/management level.

The primary and basic component of healthcare is information. Being a healthcare practitioner involves using medical knowledge and patient information to deliver the best possible care. When decisions about the care of the patient are made they must as far as possible be based on research-derived evidence rather than on clinical skills and experience alone. This decision process is complex as evidence is infrequently available in a form that can be acted upon at the time decisions must be made. The aim of this paper is to present and illustrate how a prototype visualization of a process support system can support the availability of relevant medical knowledge in a way which seamlessly integrates with healthcare practitioners work practice, and thereby enables healthcare practitioners to work in accordance with EBM. An important conclusion from this research is that a process support as the one described in this paper can reshape the practice of EBM