Electronic whiteboards in emergency medicine

Abstract

As more and more Emergency Departments replace the manual dry-erase whiteboards used for coordination of patient care and communication among clinicians with IT-based electronic whiteboards a need to clarify the effects of implementing these systems arises. This paper seeks to answer this question by systematically reviewing studies on electronic whiteboards. The results of the review indicate that electronic whiteboards influence the work at Emergency Departments in various different ways e.g. changes to work practice and changes to whiteboard information accuracy. Also, the review finds that there are mediating factors that have an impact upon these effects e.g. display format and integration with other clinical IT systems. However, the results are somewhat inconclusive and of a mixed nature and therefore this paper calls for more focused and specific research.