Clear and open or transparent communication is essential in healthcare setting, especially in inter-professional collaboration teams. Effective communication ensures that members of such teams, irrespective of their professional background and diversity, can share ideas and common approaches as well as care plans when dealing with patients and health populations (Franz et al., 2020). Communication clarity improves the overall quality of care and patient safety. Communication technologies are a critical component of effective communication in inter-professional teams between they enhance seamlessly interoperability or sharing of patient health information to make effective care decisions through a common approach. These technologies offer platforms that enable real-tome sharing of information, collaboration, and a common approach to care provisions based on better decision making (Buljac-Samardzic et al., 2020). For instance, real-time information sharing improves interoperability as providers can exchange patient health records, especially up to date information leading to better care and reduction of risks like medication errors. These technologies also enhance collaboration. For instance, electronic health records (EHRs) enable members of the inter-professional team to work together in a more effective manner. Through EHRs, they can seamlessly access current patient information and discuss plans of care as well as make collective decisions. These technologies also improve accessibility to health information as providers can get patient details anywhere without having to be physically present. On certain example of communication technologies revolutionizing healthcare communication is electronic health records (EHRs) which are digital versions of patient charts and contain all health information for individuals (Hacker et al., 2020). EHRs enhance coordination by offering comprehensive patient information, real-time updates so that inter-professional team members can get the most recent data and information, and improved communication as they can leave notes and make collective decisions and develop common plans.  As such, communication technologies are fundamental to inter-professional teams because of the roles that they play to improve care provision.

References

Franz, S., Muser, J., Thielhorn, U., Wallesch, C. W., & Behrens, J. (2020). Inter-professional communication and interaction in the neurological rehabilitation team: a literature review. Disability and rehabilitation, 42(11), 1607-1615. DOI: 10.1080/09638288.2018.1528634. Buljac-Samardzic, M., Doekhie, K. D., & van Wijngaarden, J. D. H. (2020). Interventions to improve team effectiveness within health care: a systematic review of the past decade. Human resources for health, 18(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12960-019-0411-3 Hacker, J., vom Brocke, J., Handali, J., Otto, M., & Schneider, J. (2020). Virtually in this together – how web-conferencing systems enabled a new virtual togetherness during the COVID-19 crisis. European journal of information systems, 29(5), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085x.2020.1814680