ABSTRACT
Effective communication is essential to the functioning of the healthcare system, particularly in the sharing of information between healthcare providers and between providers and patients. Poor communication leads to poor quality healthcare services. Researchers have concluded that communication errors were twice as likely to cause preventable patient disability or death as inadequate medical skill (Zinn 1995). Coiera (2003) contends that “the sheer scale and complexity of these [interdisciplinary] interactions within the healthcare system puts a heavy burden on the process of communication” (232). As a way to ameliorate such problems, several organizations have recently turned to health information and communication technologies, also known as health informatics. While many of these technologies show great promise, integrating health informatics into practice is more challenging.
