Improving work coordination through context

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A field study conducted in Winter 2016 in pharmacies and medical clinics revealed that pharmacists andphysicians need both a wide array of health-related information typically found in regional electronic healthrecords (EHRs), as well as contextual information in order to aid decision making. By contextual information,we are referring to non-medical information on work practice or environment that, nevertheless, may play animportant role in decision making, work flow and work management actions. The contextual information thatwe identified that is not easily available through EHRs was information on patient actions (ordering, picking upprescriptions) but also on the workload and environmental context of their colleagues. Further, observationswe made with patients also showed that they created their own "shadow records" of their visits and actions,also collecting and recording contextual information. The intention of this proposal is to explore more deeplythe role of contextual information in decision making, using the existing domain of medical ordering anddistribution at the consumer interface. While the study we conducted provided some early indicators ofcontextual information in pharmacies and clinics, a deeper study, combined with an understanding of the dataalready available in information systems like these, may reveal new and novel contextual metrics that may beuseful. The hypothesis is that certain kinds of contextual information will have differential benefits on decisionmaking and the efficiency of work processes.