Two project activities during technical and clinical configurations that require coordination and careful oversight by the project manager include problem management response planning and clinical site management planning.
The reasons for these activities requiring additional attention are that if any of these particular activities are not supervised, there is a chance that the entire project may suffer severe organizational and implementation detriments (Garcia-Dia, 2019). Identification of potential technical and clinical problems and the development of risk mitigation plans are essential to any project. Likewise, a clinical site management plan is required to establish proper communication channels during pre-trial, trial, and closeout phases (Garcia-Dia, 2019). Without them, any critical feedback in regards to the project may be lost, which would result in major errors and issues being overlooked until reaching the “go live” phase.
Two clinical workflows and safety patient features that commonly enhance the system build include primary care provider workflows and health information security workflows. The former enhances the system by providing a clear set of steps necessary for a primary care provider to either provide services to the patient or forward them to other clinicians if their situation requires it (Garcia-Dia, 2019). Information security workflow, on the other hand, concerns all the necessary motions to ensure that private patient data remains safe while being stored within the system, database, or software. The latter often comes into conflict with other workflows by adding extra steps, checks, and oversight parameters that may slow down the process (Garcia-Dia, 2019). Nevertheless, these checks and balances are critical in ensuring that confidential data remains outside of the reach of any interested third parties.
The “go live” stage of the project is when it leaves the testing phase and becomes available for users. In general, workflows have two types of impact on that stage. A workflow allows to streamline procedures and make them quicker and more comprehensible to the users, thus hastening the “go live” stage of the project (Hussey, 2021). At the same time, if there are many activities and workflows present within a single project or software, the probability of error increases (Hussey, 2021). In order to make sure all of them are tested out properly, the pre-test phase will be prolonged, thus putting back the “go live” stage. In addition, the presence of multiple actions and workflows makes software less intuitive to end users. Overall, it is necessary to find a balance between the number of workflows and functionality of a specific product or software. Compartmentalization may allow us to solve some of the issues associated with functionality overload.
Some of the activation activities during the “go live” process include communication, readiness, and command/control activities (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2021). A nursing informatics specialist can play a role during all three of these stages. During the communication stage, they can inform all users and departments about the software about to go live, let them know what support is available to them, and provide contacts if necessary.
During the readiness stage, they could engage with users and departments, providing instructions on how to properly utilize the product, and answering any questions they might have about the procedure (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2021). Once that is done, the nurse informatics specialist could assume a command/control position, ensuring that the system functions normally and addressing any issues or concerns that appear throughout the course of the system’s utilization.
References
Garcia-Dia, M. J. (Ed.). (2019). Project management in nursing informatics. Springer Publishing Company.
Hussey, P. (2021). Introduction to nursing informatics. Springer, Cham.
McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. (2021). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.