HealthGate Articles

Structured Asynchronous Collaboration: The New Panacea

There are two general types of collaborative technologies—synchronous and asynchronous. Synchronous collaboration technologies are commonly used in organizations today and include:

• Real-time meetings
• Telecommuting and video conferencing
• E-mail listservs
• Blogs
• Project management tools

With all of the different pulls on healthcare and quality professionals’ time, undertaking improvement activities without the use of collaborative technologies would be quite daunting. But, as we move beyond e-mail, spreadsheets and static project plans, asynchronous technologies will help us to achieve something that is more dynamic—allowing for version control and fostering of participation from multiple stakeholders, in multiple locations, at multiple times.

Finding a Structured, Asynchronous Collaboration Solution that Works for You

Not all structured collaboration solutions are created equal, so it is important to find the right one for your organization. Finding the right solution means looking beyond cost, basic usability and existing vendor relationships to the true needs of your organization. Conducting a needs assessment, speaking with internal stakeholders and interviewing current users of prospect solutions is a great way to identify priority features and use case scenarios. Listed below are some commonly asked for collaboration solution features to help guide your solution-finding process.

Efficiency

• Provide 24/7 access to documents
• Promote efficient, defined decision periods to help meet deadlines
• Supply a database of online templates for clinical documents and administrative processes
• Make the informed planning document and policy-building process as easy, organized and centralized as possible

Accountability and Transparency

• Offer a simple way to track comments
• Provide a clear audit trail
• Provide easy traceability/visibility of document versions
• Ensure that everyone is working with the same, most recent version of a document

Security

• Support document versioning
• Maintain secure workflow through administrative authorizations

Accessibility

• Allow any number of teams/team members to collaborate in their own time and in their own place
• Furnish immediate access to current external, evidence-based sources
• Import third-party content

Although collaborative technologies are widely used in other industries, adoption in the healthcare industry is lagging. Part of this lag time can be attributed to the specific challenges and needs of healthcare providers and the inability of most “corporate” collaborative technology solutions to meet them. HealthGate is a provider of collaboration solutions specifically designed for implementation in the healthcare setting, and we welcome inquiries from our readers to learn more about our products.