Shortliffe E H, Patel V L, Cimino J J, Barnett G O, Greenes R A
Section on Medical Informatics, Stanford University, CA 94305-5479, USA.
Artif Intell Med. 1998 Feb;12(2):97-123. doi: 10.1016/s0933-3657(97)00045-6.
The InterMed Collaboratory involves five medical institutions (Stanford University, Columbia University, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and McGill University) whose mandate has been to join in the development of shared infrastructural software, tools, and system components that will facilitate and support the development of diverse, institution-specific applications. Collaboration among geographically distributed organizations with different goals and cultures provides significant challenges. One experimental question, underlying all that InterMed has set out to achieve, is whether modern communication technologies can effectively bridge such cultural and geographical gaps, allowing the development of shared visions and cooperative activities so that the end results are greater than any one group could have accomplished on its own. In this paper we summarize the InterMed philosophy and mission, describe our progress over 3 years of collaborative activities, and present study results regarding the nature of the evolving collaborative processes, the perceptions of the participants regarding those processes, and the role that telephone conference calls have played in furthering project goals. Both informal introspection and more formal evaluative work, in which project participants became subjects of study by our evaluation experts from McGill, helped to shift our activities from relatively unfocused to more focused efforts while allowing us to understand the facilitating roles that communications technologies could play in our activities. Our experience and study results suggest that occasional face-to-face meetings are crucial precursors to the effective use of distance communications technologies; that conference calls play an important role in both task-related activities and executive (project management) activities, especially when clarifications are required; and that collaborative productivity is highly dependent upon the gradual development of a shared commitment to a well-defined task that leverages the varying expertise of both local and distant colleagues in the creation of tools of broad utility across the participating sites.
跨医学协作实验室涉及五家医疗机构（斯坦福大学、哥伦比亚大学、布莱根妇女医院、麻省总医院和麦吉尔大学），其任务是共同开发共享的基础设施软件、工具和系统组件，以促进和支持各种特定于机构的应用程序的开发。具有不同目标和文化的地理分布组织之间的合作带来了重大挑战。跨医学试图实现的所有目标背后的一个实验性问题是，现代通信技术能否有效弥合这种文化和地理差距，从而促成共同愿景的形成和合作活动的开展，使最终成果大于任何一个团队独自所能取得的成就。在本文中，我们总结了跨医学的理念和使命，描述了我们在3年合作活动中的进展，并展示了有关不断演变的协作过程的性质、参与者对这些过程的看法以及电话会议在推进项目目标中所起作用的研究结果。非正式的反思以及更正式的评估工作（在这些工作中，项目参与者成为了我们麦吉尔大学评估专家的研究对象），有助于将我们的活动从相对无重点转向更有重点的努力，同时使我们能够理解通信技术在我们活动中可能发挥的促进作用。我们的经验和研究结果表明，偶尔的面对面会议是有效使用远程通信技术的关键前提；电话会议在与任务相关的活动和执行（项目管理）活动中都发挥着重要作用，尤其是在需要澄清问题时；并且协作效率高度依赖于对明确任务的共同承诺的逐步形成，该任务利用本地和远程同事的不同专业知识，在参与站点创建具有广泛用途的工具。
