Making background work visible: opportunities to address patient information needs in the hospital

Despite growing use of patient-facing technologies such as patient portals to address information needs for outpatients, we understand little about how patients manage information and use information technologies in an inpatient context. Based on hospital observations and responses to an online questionnaire from previously hospitalized patients and caregivers, we describe information workspace that patients have available to them in the hospital and the information items that patients and caregivers rate as important and difficult to access or manage while hospitalized. We found that patients and caregivers desired information-such as the plan of care and the schedule of activities-that is difficult to access as needed in a hospital setting. Within this study, we describe the various tools and approaches that patients and caregivers use to help monitor their care as well as illuminate gaps in information needs not typically captured by traditional patient portals.