What is clinical groupware?

Clinical groupware is a new and evolving model for the development and deployment of health information technology (HIT) platforms and applications having the following characteristics:

• Use of the Internet and the Web for EHR technology.
• Explicit design for information sharing and online communication among providers and patients/consumers.
• A modular or component architecture upon which applications can be aggregated to meet specific clinical and workflow tasks.
• Patient/consumer engagement tools that facilitate ongoing health management and care coordination.
• Interface and data exchange standards for information sharing that emerge in a market-driven manner.

Clinical groupware applications can be distributed as software or as software-as-a-service, can be installable or downloadable applications, and/or can run in a browser, and are intended to support today's dynamic health care environment by supplying the right information, at the right time and the right place.

Advocates of the clinical groupware approach are not limited to software developers and technologists, but also include practicing physicians, executives and managers from health care provider organizations and care management companies, patients, consumer and patient advocates, and leaders in HIT, life sciences, home monitoring, and medical device manufacturing firms.

Introducing the Clinical Groupware Collaborative

The Clinical Groupware Collaborative (CGC) is a new organization, presently in its formative stage, consisting of members with a shared desire to see growth in the acquisition and use of affordable, easy-to-use, and interoperable EHR technology, especially among the very large group of "non-consumers" who have found legacy EMRs cumbersome, expensive, and technically challenging to use.