Digital communications across the health services have to be radically improved in order to enable health professionals to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on patient-centric activities. For example, in relation to enabling such communication amongst professionals, while email is useful, care must be taken not to try to use it for purposes for which it was never intended, especially these days with the maturation and cost-effectiveness of cloud and collaboration technologies that can substantially improve communication and cooperation between professionals at low cost.
Obviously, the email platform should continue to address facilities such as creating and receiving emails, delegated access, distribution lists, shared mailboxes, out-of-office assistant, archiving, email router, portable email accounts, gateway and relay, but all too often email locks away patient information from most health professionals when they need it.
