Supporting collaborative work through wireless technologies support in Patient Centric Virtual Organizations (PCVOS)

Abstract

The paper presents a Virtual Organization (VO) framework which incorporates wireless technologies support at the point of care in the clinical healthcare environment. It reflects the move to patient-centric healthcare given by multidisciplinary care team collaborating in the patient's treatment. The work sheds light into how VOs incorporating wireless technologies can meet the needs of the care team. It describes technical factors of Virtual Organizations and discusses their role in a clinical environment. It identifies how existing virtual infrastructures in the healthcare literature relate to the development of Patient Centric Virtual Organizations (PCVOs). It addresses the issues and results determined by a case study. These results inform the design, development and evaluation strategy of the pilot project to achieve sustainable collaborative working of care teams for possible improvements in patient care infrastructure. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.