Special issue on Supporting Collaboration in Healthcare Settings: The Role of Informatics

摘要

1. Introduction Healthcare is among the most complex and highly collaborative domains of work in the world. Medical informatics researchers have been studying the role of collaboration and how to best support these collaborative activities for a number of years [1,2]. Furthermore, researchers in disciplines outside of medical informatics such as Computer-Supported Cooperative Work have long been interested in healthcare [3] including examination of electronic medical records in collaborative clinical settings [4], collaborative technologies in healthcare [5], and the collaborative practices of patient care teams [6]. Through these and other studies, we have gained a better understanding of the role that collaboration plays in healthcare and the types of technologies that can support collaboration among health care workers.