Once embarked on an EHR journey, Ministry needed to develop supporting corporate infrastructure, tasks such as finding a Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO). While those efforts were underway, we pulled together a team of clinicians and staff who were using or had used an electronic medical record in the past. This team gathered virtually on a regular basis to develop a joint vision of what practicing clinicians need in an EHR.
I have found clinicians who have used EMRs in the past possess unique insights as to how an EMR can be used to improve provision of care. Clinicians who have not used an EMR, tend to develop workflows duplicating their paper flows rather than finding new processes to leverage the technology.
We gathered over the noon hour once a week via a telephone conference. We generally talked about a topic and flushed out our functional specification. Offline, we developed representative screen shots depicting the functionality we desired. Screen shots and functional requirements were shared using PowerPoint Presentations sent via our internal e-mail server. Today we would collaborate using WebEx as the communication tool.
By the time Ministry had hired a CIO and CMIO, the clinicians had formed a very clear vision of our functional specifications.
