%0 Journal Article
%T Family Interaction and Consensus with IT Support
%A Peter Karlsudd
%J International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications
%D 2012
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2012/269637
%X Experience shows that there are great defects in information and collaboration between families and professionals in the health and care sector. In an attempt to improve the quality of the efforts planned and implemented in collaboration with relatives a family-related IT-based collaboration system called CIDC was constructed. With the intention to facilitate communication, information, documentation, and collaboration the system was tested together with parents of children with cognitive impairment. The system contains a number of functions gathered in a so-called e-collaboration room. The person administering and distributing the system authorizes the patient/care recipient or relative to build up an e-collaboration room. The result has been largely positive, but the part, which was supposed to document everyday activities, leaves much to be desired. For this reason a follow-up study was completed, and an iPad was used as a contact book, which with the help of the Dropbox software provided increased insight into the child and improved the contact with parents without losing confidentiality or causing extra workload for the staff. By automatic download from the iPad parents and/or contact persons could easily follow the documentation of childrenĄ¯s everyday activities. 1. Introduction In health, long-term care, and rehabilitation and habilitation efforts there are often several different professions involved. Each one of these actors makes important decisions and carries out activities of importance to the decisions and efforts made by other participants. A familiar problem in these processes (chains of care) is that the communication does not work as desired. Frequently decisions are made of which families and professionals should partake but the information does not reach them quickly and effectively enough. Quite often there is a lack of coordinated planning and a joint approach, even though this is prescribed in policy documents at all levels [1, 2]. Sometimes families and the different professional groups do not know who are included in activities around a person that is subjected to, for example, rehabilitating efforts, let alone what overarching methods apply in the efforts. At other times the various measures work in opposite directions, which is inefficient, and in the worst case creates problems and suffering. For people who take part in two or three activities every day the contact may be bad between, for instance, a residence for the intellectually disabled and a school or workplace (daily activity). Not seldom does it happen that
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijta/2012/269637/