Using video to improve health IT efforts
Last week, in going through the many healthcare IT articles, I came across one that caught my eye. The title of the article is “How video observation can improve health IT efforts.”
As a tennis player, I know that one of the most effective methods pros use is video. A pro might say, “You need to turn your shoulder more on your backhand,” or “You’re not keeping your head up long enough on the overhead.” The player might sort of believe him, but when he sees it on video, there is an “aha” moment. The video makes the action more compelling, and the person doing the action (or not) becomes more engaged.
In the case of using video in the healthcare setting, everyone benefits – clinicians and patients alike. Susan Hall of FierceHealthIT describes Danish research, which reviewed nine case studies using video observation. Researchers showed that the videotape method can be an effective tool for understanding clinical practice. And understanding clinical workflow, the study's authors say, can be integral to improving health information technology development.
While traditional study methods ask what clinicians say they do during their daily work, they don't always include all of their actual activity because some aspects of a job become second nature. Video can capture their actual practice--even the unspoken aspects of the job--according to the research article published in BMC Medical Informatics & Decision Making. The nine case studies, videotaped in various hospital wards, were varied. One detailed the medication process in a cardiology department, while another sought to understand, from clinicians' views, the implementation of an electronic health record system by chronicling their work before and after.
Video is an important tool to study more closely the clinicians’ workflow and practices, improve system design, spot areas in the workflow which can be improved, identify best practices, and help teach other clinicians. I also think this practice can be helpful for medical school students as they learn more about the different aspects of the care setting, including the areas pertaining to healthcare IT.
We have all heard the expression, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Every day and in many ways, we are seeing proof of this– even when it comes to healthcare IT. The healthcare field sees the value of using video to make clinicians more aware of what they are doing to improve internal processes.
Are you using video in unique ways? Or would you like to? We’d love to hear from you.
Posted by Davida Dinerman on September 5, 2012 at 8:07 AM
