Building an Electronic Handover Tool for Physicians Using a Collaborative Approach between Clinicians and the Development Team.

In an effort by The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) to become one of the top 10% performers in patient safety and quality of care, the hospital embarked on improving the communication process during handover between physicians by building an electronic handover tool. It is expected that this tool will decrease information loss during handover. The Information Systems (IS) department engaged a workgroup of physicians to become involved in defining requirements to build an electronic handover tool that suited their clinical handover needs. This group became ultimately responsible for defining the graphical user interface (GUI) and all functionality related to the tool. Prior to the pilot, the Information Systems team will run a usability testing session to ensure the application is user friendly and has met the goals and objectives of the workgroup. As a result, The Ottawa Hospital has developed a fully integrated electronic handover tool built on the Clinical Mobile Application (CMA) which allows clinicians to enter patient problems, notes and tasks available to all physicians to facilitate the handover process.