The interdisciplinary eHealth team: chronic care for the future.
An interdisciplinary clinical team is a consistent grouping of people from relevant clinical disciplines, ideally inclusive of the patient, whose interactions are guided by specific team functions and processes to achieve team-defined favorable patient outcomes. Teamwork supported by properly designed eHealth applications could help create more effective systems of care for chronic disease. Given its synchronous and asynchronous communication capacity and information-gathering and -sharing capabilities, the Internet is a logical platform for supporting interdisciplinary clinical teamwork. Research is needed to better understand how interdisciplinary eHealth team members can work together in everyday practice and to guide the development of effective and efficient eHealth software applications to support greater clinical teamwork.
Distance Education for Health, Department of Family Medicine, Dowling 5 South, 1 Boston Medical Center Place, Boston University Medical Campus, Boston, MA 02118, USA. John.Wiecha@bmc.org
John
J
Wiecha
Timothy
T
Pollard
D032921:Consensus; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000639:trends; D006302:Health Services Research / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008134:Long-Term Care / Q000639:trends*; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000639:trends*