Despite the hustle and bustle in healthcare, many healthcare
professionals don't get to meet their peers as often as they might
like. They move in an endless round of clinics, surgeries,
theatres, departments, wards, professional committees etc.; and
don't get a chance to have a cup of coffee, let alone share best
practice. But a new enterprise social networking platform exclusive
to the healthcare community means they can now connect with
colleagues 24/7 using the same techniques as popular social
networking sites. Paul Curran finds out from its co-founders, Dr
Jonathon Shaw and Dr Jonathan Bloor, how DocCom.me is enabling
frontline staff to collaborate more effectively.
Communication breakdown
Communication between staff can be frustrating at the best of
times in any organisation, says Dr Jonathon Shaw. "But in a typical
hospital environment, frontline workers generally don't have the
luxury of their own desk, filing tray, PC or phone. The minute
they're no longer in the same room as their colleagues,
communication and collaboration can easily break down."
Shaw says healthcare invariably involves large organisations
with a highly mobile workforce. "Since they work shifts and switch
hospitals and specialties as often as every six months, those on
the frontline of patient care have never been more remote from
their employers. Indeed, our own research shows that nine out of
ten acute trusts are struggling to keep in touch with staff."
"With such a dynamic group of people, it can be incredibly
difficult to manage email distribution lists, for example; getting
a simple communication out to frontline workers can be a lottery
that takes forever. To make matters worse, NHS legacy systems, like
intranets and email, tend to be flaky; it makes life difficult for
a consultant, say, who simply wants to arrange a meeting of all the
doctors working under him."
Similarly, at home, Dr Jonathan Bloor says frontline healthcare
professionals generally have no easy way to access work data,
emails and other communications. "Most have no permanent place to
store information related to their work or any way to alert the
relevant people when their contact details or skills profiles
change. The result is a communication breakdown that threatens
patient care.
"We've both experienced first-hand the frustrations, dangers and
waste resulting from ineffective and archaic communication systems
typically found within the NHS," he says. "It all adds up to a
problem that's potentially costing lives, as well as time and
money."
A virtual in-tray and networking platform
In their determination to overcome these communication barriers
within healthcare, the two doctors have developed DocCom.Me, a
social networking site specific to health workers. With this focus,
it naturally features enterprise-grade security and access which is
restricted to healthcare professionals. They make no secret of the
fact that their brainchild is modelled on proven social networking
techniques that free individuals from corporate legacy systems.
"Online tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have opened up
a whole host of communications channels that allow people to share
information, socialise and keep in touch with one another wherever
they happen to be," says Bloor. "In this way, social media has
revolutionised the way people work and communicate; it's become a
must-have engagement channel for everyone - from school kids to
retail giants.
"By harnessing similar technology in a secure and professional
context, DocCom.me enables networking within and between NHS
trusts, training organisations, special interest groups and other
relevant bodies; we've simply created the site as a means of
allowing healthcare pros to engage with their peers.
"Designed by doctors and clinicians who understand the
idiosyncracies of the NHS in particular, the site acts as a virtual
in-tray and networking platform through which healthcare
professionals can find, share and collaborate with their colleagues
and employers."
Bloor says the system is easy to use and integrates fully with
the NHS's existing IT infrastructure to provide users with a
central access point. "Whether it's the latest patient safety
announcements, policy and procedures updates, training information
or work rotas, DocCom.me will ensure the right information gets to
the right people in the right way at the right time," he says.
Viral future ahead
Social networks typically face one interesting technology
challenge, though. If they don't attract an audience, well, they
just atrophy and wither away. But when they achieve critical mass -
as luminaries like Facebook or Twitter have - their need for raw
technology power explodes. Shaw is confident that DocCom.me is well
prepared for a viral future. "Having chosen Microsoft's Windows
Azure, one of the world's most sophisticated and secure cloud
computing platforms, as our underlying technology, we can
comfortably cope with surges in demand as more and more healthcare
professionals register for free on the site.
"By reducing the need for significant capital expenditure on
infrastructure and hardware engineers, we will also be able to
focus on developing our applications, leaving Microsoft to manage
and scale our infrastructure, and paying them only for the capacity
we use.
"What we particularly like about Azure is that it removes any
uncertainty about our growth and gives us complete elastic
scalability, which means our brilliant team of software engineers
can focus on what they do best. Since it is based on Microsoft's
leading-edge intelligent technology, it's also reassuring to know
that DocCom.me is running on the world's most advanced cloud
platform from a security perspective.
