Web‐Based Team Collaboration Environment for Clinical Care, Research, and Education at an Academic Hospitalist Group

Background:

As hospitalist groups grow larger, it is important for every member of the team to be on the same page with new developments and in‐house rules and regulations. Exchanging e‐mails has the limitation of not providing a central resource for information that can be easily accessed and searched by all group members at the same time. It appears beneficial for all members of a hospitalist group to be literally on the same Intranet Web page, where they can collaborate and create an archive and “electronic memory” for the group. Several Web‐based software products can achieve a level of secure and efficient communication that can act as a cohesive electronic platform for a hospitalist group.

Purpose:

Our goal was to explore the use of Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services as an Intranet collaboration environment for clinical care, research, and education at an academic hospitalist group.

Description:

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is a Web‐based team collaboration environment that enables a team of workers to easily access and share information. We employed WSS software to create a collaborative Intranet Web site for an academic hospitalist group at a large tertiary‐care center. The Web site is used to upload patient care protocols and call schedules and to archive conference presentations and other electronic files found to be useful by the members of the hospitalist group. Links to Institutional Review Board forms, research articles, and projects are also provided. The Web site is integrated into the orientation process of hospitalists newly recruited to the group. Access to the SharePoint site is via the same user credentials used to access corporate Outlook‐based e‐mail. Members of the group are allowed to build custom subpages and to upload files. All files and Web pages are easily accessible by a built‐in search function. This SharePoint‐based Intranet Web site allows collaboration among several hospitalist teams on the main campus and at the satellite hospitals of the health system. The Web site is also used for calendars, event announcements, and discussion groups. The statistics log shows that our site receives on average 10,000‐13,000 visits per month.

Conclusions:

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is a Web‐based team collaboration environment that is very flexible and allows hospitalists to build custom Web pages to provide virtually any functionality needed by the group. Even without custom coding, these tools can be readily harnessed by the academic medical community to help address clinical, research, and educational needs.

Author Disclosure:

A. Atreja, None; V. Dimov, None; R. Hebbar, None; A. Kumar, None; J. Sharp, None; N. Mehta, None; F. Michota, None.