Effective multidisciplinary communication in healthcare: Cooperative documentation systems

To support multidisciplinary communication and cooperation in healthcare, c ooperative documentation systems (CDSs) have been developed, However, in th e current generation of systems, communication problems that can pose a ser ious threat to smooth and effective cooperation have occurred and remain to be addressed. This paper presents a set of features that need to be consid ered in the design of a new generation of CDSs to avoid breakdowns in commu nication and cooperation. Our approach is solidly grounded in linguistic an d social theories and based on empirical investigations of communication pa tterns in multidisciplinary healthcare, It is argued that this work provide s a theoretically rigorous approach to the design of CDSs that will enable effective multidisciplinary communication and cooperation in healthcare.