Electronic Whiteboards and Intensive Care Unit follow up: Outreach – follow up within 24 h from the transfer to a general ward

This paper is reviewing the existing literature on Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Outreach, in-hospital follow up 24 hours after the transition to a general ward from an ICU. It also touches upon the use of Electronic Whiteboards in a hospital setting and how the electronic whiteboards might support communication and collaboration between wards; in this setting between the ICU and general ward. The stakeholder is the health care staff focusing on the nurses in both ICU and general wards.
Research on ICU follow up outlines two fundamental issues in the transition between wards: 1) communication/collaboration and 2) information. However no literature has been found on how to maintain the communication and collaboration between wards when time of the respectively project has run out.
Research on electronic whiteboards in hospital settings find that supporting communication between e.g. wards and the transfer of information is optimized using an electronic whiteboard. Negative findings in the research on electronic whiteboards are present too e.g. it is crucial to have the same use language when sharing the same interface and reports on system in-flexibility; dash-board (standardized use of language) vs. open-ended dry-erase whiteboard (make-up-your-own-sentences).
In conclusion the primary feature in the two subjects is to optimize communication/collaboration and information between ICU and general wards in the transition. To make it a long term solution the content of such a support would need involvement of the end-users in the design process (Participatory Design). Hence these two findings, this review is setting the stage for further research on how electronic whiteboards can support the initial follow up when patients are transferred from an ICU to a general ward.