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Organising Videoconferencing for Collaborative Medical Diagnosis: Pre-Planned and Acute Practice

Authors:
Line Lundvoll Warth

Keywords: videoconference; Collaborative medical diagnosis; context; pre-planned; acute

Abstract:
How videoconferences (VCs) as a tool for real-time collaborative medical diagnosis are organised affects the content of collaborative work. The objective of this paper is to outline how the organisation of VCs for pre-planned and acute situations affects content in collaboration. Forty-seven VCs were observed and videotaped, and twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted in two studies, representing three contexts, reflecting pre-planned and acute medical problem solving. Regularly pre-planned meetings differ from others, creating a practice that includes consultations about general medical problems, the opportunity to discuss specialised problems, and information sharing between levels of care. Regularity and thus knowledge of each other and of the patient support the sharing of information about patients previously discussed. Acute use of VC is organised as a restricted service, offered during a specific timeslot during the day. The consultation is specialised (i.e., stroke), in which professional(s) with specific specialised knowledge meet. Non-planned, 24/7 acute use of VC is still left to be explored in its context. What is known is that acute knowledge is knowledge in the moment, requiring unplanned access to VC as a tool for sharing knowledge resources twenty-four hours a day. These factors should be considered when VC is implemented for collaborative medical diagnosis. The paper is relevant as it is concerned with tools to enhance collaboration online, i.e., VC, and how VC improves the value of distributed knowledge among virtual teams.

Pages: 29 to 34

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2014

Publication date: March 23, 2014

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4359

ISBN: 978-1-61208-327-8

Location: Barcelona, Spain

Dates: from March 23, 2014 to March 27, 2014