A mobile, collaborative, real time task list for inpatient environments

Abstract

Summary Background: Inpatient teams commonly track their tasks using paper checklists that are not shared between team members. Team members frequently communicate redundantly in order to prevent errors. Methods: We created a mobile, collaborative, real-time task list application on the iOS platform. The application listed tasks for each patient, allowed users to check them off as completed, and transmitted that information to all other team members. In this report, we qualitatively describe our experience designing and piloting the application with an inpatient pediatric ward team at an academic pediatric hospital. Results: We successfully created the tasklist application, however team members showed limited usage. Conclusion: Physicians described that they preferred the immediacy and familiarity of paper, and did not experience an efficiency benefit when using the electronic tasklist.