Participatory design and infrastructures for coordination and communication in interdisciplinary mobile health teams

This paper reports on a current project that explores how wireless and mobile technologies, in this case Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and Tablet PCs, may be useful in clinical practices. In particular the support and practices for just-in-time coordination and communication among members in highly mobile health teams are focused. Their practice is related to just-in-time access to information for coordination of care and treatment related to, but different from, information traditionally stored in the patients' health records and clinical information systems (CIS). To facilitate discussion and participation among various stakeholders, and between organizational contexts and responsibilities, we developed four video scenarios. The paper describes how these scenarios can be used in an organizational development setting to facilitate analysis and design of tools mindful of the relationships between complex and interwoven infrastructures of communication on one hand and just-in-time aspects of a mobile clinical practice on the other.