Help with the roll-out

Systematic facilitated workshops with clinical healthcare staff with a view to designing the clearest and most effective overview screens

More than 10 per cent of the staff in Systematic’s healthcare business unit are domain specialists – normally nurses and medical secretaries. In addition to a professional background in their particular field, which enables them to talk to end-users in a language they understand, they also have a technical background. This means they are in a position to act as effective intermediaries between users and developers.

Systematic collaborated in the implementation of Columna at certain selected hospitals in the Central Denmark Region. One of the tasks in this implementation was to facilitate workshops with clinical staff with a view to designing the clearest and most effective overview screens. Systematic is strongly inspired by the principles used in IT teaching methods, including the recommendation that users should be able to understand the structure of the new system, have an overview of the new system, and be able to learn new functionality on their own.

Practical insights

At several workshops, doctors, nurses, medical secretaries and others were given paper and scissors to create the overviews that best support their particular real-world working procedures. Among other things, this process gave the workshop participants an understanding for the different overview needs encountered by the various groups of users, while resulting in more variants of ‘Overview’ that all create the best possible levels of care quality and procedural efficiency.

At several workshops, doctors, nurses, medical secretaries and others were given paper and scissors to create the overviews that best support their particular real-world working procedures.

As the Senior Hospital Physician of the pediatric ward at the Regional Hospital of Randers, Rune Weis Næraa was involved in the development of ‘Overview’. Today, Rune Weis Næraa is the Senior Hospital Physician of the pediatric ward at Aarhus University Hospital, Skejby.

‘Systematic involves the users in an ideal way, which pays off in the results. Our input was thus very obvious when Systematic, presented their first draft of the “Overview” screen for the Columna Patient Record module, subsequent to the introductory workshop.’

‘From their presentation, it was also clear that Systematic is, in fact, very familiar with the healthcare sector and its needs. They didn’t just enquire about users’ needs – they really listened to what was actually being said! In that context, it’s probably also significant that many of the Systematic staff have professional experience from our world – the whole working relationship becomes easier and more inspiring when the person on the other side of the table is on the same wavelength, professionally speaking.’

‘The working relationship was very professional, and for that reason I am very pleased with the process, as well as the results.’

Benthe Kristensen is a nurse and works with the clinical information system at Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus Hospital. She was involved with the development of the Columna ‘Overview’ screen.

‘I’ve worked with clinical information systems for many years and have therefore known for a long time that there would be a need for creating an overview of the many fragmented pieces of information contained in the system. Which is why we were very excited when we – drawn from many different professional groups – were tasked with trying to design, both together and separately, the most appropriate overview screen, using paper and scissors.’

‘We received competent help from Systematic staff, who stood out by having both a deep insight into our field and being proficient with IT – it can often be hard to explain your needs to someone who isn’t familiar with our specialist field. And, I must say, I’m both happy with the result and very impressed. The overview screen consolidates the most relevant information – and can be adapted to the needs of different professional groups.’

Download case story about overviews of the different kinds of patient record information as a pdf

For further information
Please call Systematic Healthcare Sales at +45 89 43 20 00 or send an e-mail