No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

This paper presents an ongoing work in on the future of telemedicine in O&G. There has been a huge development in the use of video consultation between remote patients and the doctors. We believe the future of telemedicine in O&G will add to this workflow by investigating how we can transfer visual medical data between "offshore nurses" and "medical experts" at hospitals onshore in order to improve diagnostics and treatment. We will describe a decision support system that supports an optimal workflow and collaboration, between medics onshore and offshore. The goal is to make better and faster medical decisions, and improve the quality of healthcare offshore. The oil companies have much of the same structure and same challenges in remote medical treatment. We investigate an optimal workflow including how technology supports a new telemedicine work process by transmitting very high quality information (e.g. ultrasound images) to the cardiovascular medical experts. We will review our work on developing a prototype "on the go" solution between medics offshore and the medical experts onshore at the hospital. The concept will be based on a Pad/PC solution capturing the ultrasound image transmission between the user and experts, a systematic work process and a knowledge base integrated in the Pad/PC "on the go solution". With optimal workflow it should not take more than 5-7 minutes from the starting point to have a decision from the medical expert. This will improve diagnostics, medical safety and health quality on offshore installations.

Nurse calls in a hospital can constitute either positive or negative (wanted or unwanted) interruptions depending on various factors. This study aims to understand nurses' strategies in facilitating the reception of wanted nurse calls and the restriction of unwanted nurse calls. Applying a resilience engineering perspective, nurses' performance variability is investigated as a basis to design appropriate computer support to enhance efficiency and patient safety. A qualitative case study was conducted for a period of 4 years with focus on nurses' use of a wireless nurse call system at a Norwegian university hospital. The study involved various data collection methods such as observations, interviews, and workshops. The collected data were then transcribed and analyzed using a combined inductive and deductive approach. Results indicate that nurses use four main strategies involving a large degree of collaboration to allow or avoid interruptions in the form of nurse calls depending on situation and circumstances. However, these strategies are not supported by the wireless nurse call system, which requires nurses to use suboptimal workarounds to enable the necessary performance variability. Interruptions have been largely perceived as a threat to patient safety. However, nurses' handling of calls illustrates that, when aiming to introduce interventions to manage interruptions, a detailed understanding of work as done is important. Nurses continuously make appropriate adjustments to cope with challenges that characterize hospital work to ensure efficient and safe operations. Hence, technology, in terms of a nurse call system, needs to be designed to afford the adjustments made to support a resilient practice and, as such, leverage patient safety.