How do you create a manual for an application that requires fluid knowledge? The information of today may be changed by tomorrow’s hot fix, or next year’s upgrade. Knowledge about how people are using the system informs how we work to support them, their TouchWorks Allscripts Enterprise EHR system and their technical environment. Consultants to the Healthcare Industry must be more than just experts, they must be collaborators and partners with their client base in order to create the best and most robust systems for their clients and further the goals of better, higher quality medical care.

The Wiki is a tool that helps us to do just that. It is not a knowledgebase or SharePoint full of static articles that will be outdated tomorrow, but a dynamic and robust resource that can easily be updated to reflect the information that is current today. The Wiki is not “our” proprietary information. It is a collaboration between Galen employees and the greater EHR community (primarily Allscripts users right now)

Our knowledge and skills are constantly enhanced by the creative problem solving that we encounter as we work with our client base to develop systems that support physicians providing the best care to their patients. The Wiki is a tool that can keep up with the pace of information and innovation as we move forward. The name “Wiki” comes from the Hawaiian word “Wiki – Wiki” meaning fast.

Galen has been using the Wiki to publish answers to upgrade related questions as they are asked. Other collaborators can then see the information instantly (and are alerted in their outlook if they subscribe to the RSS feed) and can add any additional information that may be helpful.

Clients often come to us with real practical knowledge of their experiences with EHR and great stories of innovation that could be helpful to other product users. The Galen wiki is a place where users can have a platform to share their stories of how they made their system work for them and share suggestions with others. There are also talk pages connected to each article, so if a user has a question that they would like answered they could enter that into a discussion page connected to an article in order to get some additional information.

http://wiki.galenhealthcare.com

M. Maxwell Henson-Stroud, MSW

Upgrade Consultant