Summary
Background
Healthcare team members in emergency department contexts have used electronic whiteboard
solutions to help manage operational workflow for many years. Ambulatory clinic settings
have highly complex operational workflow, but are still limited in electronic assistance
to communicate and coordinate work activities.
Objective
To describe and discuss the design, implementation, use, and ongoing evolution of
a coordination and collaboration tool supporting ambulatory clinic operational workflow
at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC).
Methods
The outpatient whiteboard tool was initially designed to support healthcare work related
to an electronic chemotherapy order-entry application. After a highly successful initial
implementation in an oncology context, a high demand emerged across the organization
for the outpatient whiteboard implementation. Over the past 10 years, developers have
followed an iterative usercentered design process to evolve the tool.
Results
The electronic outpatient whiteboard system supports 194 separate whiteboards and
is accessed by over 2800 distinct users on a typical day. Clinics can configure their
whiteboards to support unique workflow elements. Since initial release, features such
as immunization clinical decision support have been integrated into the system, based
on requests from end users.
Conclusions
The success of the electronic outpatient whiteboard demonstrates the usefulness of
an operational workflow tool within the ambulatory clinic setting. Operational workflow
tools can play a significant role in supporting coordination, collaboration, and teamwork
in ambulatory healthcare settings.
Keywords
Workflow - health information technology - decision making - ambulatory care
