Beyond Medical Informatics

There’a a new Google product. It’s called Google Sidewiki. Here’s more information.

From the site:

“Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar that lets you contribute and read information alongside any web page.”

Since we are building a Web-based Hospital Information System, a browser-based sidebar or ‘sidewiki’ might be of good use to us. Here are some ideas:

• increase collaboration between healthcare teams
• write down early observations and suspicions without committing to patient chart
• tag or bookmark specific patient information for future references
• manage and track compliance to clinical guidelines
• sidenotes for clinical pathways, especially for deviations

This is basically a ‘side notes’ tool that harnesses the ‘wisdom of the crowd’. Although the Internet has embraced the collaborative nature of Web 2.0, hospital applications still need to increase adoption. This Sidewiki concept might introduce new ideas in the healthcare environment that can bridge gaps between semi-private healthcare notes and team collaboration.

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HIT Ideas Disclaimer: In this category, I explore new (and old) technologies that might be of use in my HIT projects and in Medical Informatics projects in general. This post is not a recommendation. Privacy, confidentiality and data integrity issues should still be considered prior to production implementation.