Improved productivity with teleconferencing

Discussions last longer and the participants absorb more information with teleconferencing. These are the results from an investigation made by Bridget Kane from Trinity College in Ireland. Photo: Jan Fredrik Frantzen, NST.

During the winter of 2005 to 2006, Bridget Kane and her colleagues conducted an experiment at St. James's Hospital in Dublin, Ireland. The objective was to find out whether teleconferences improved collaboration between doctors when they met to discuss the treatment of patients with lung cancer.

The study involved both conventional conferences at St. James and teleconferences between St. James and the hospitals in Tullamore and Mullingar. In both cases they discussed diagnoses and treatment of cancer patients, and could look at patient records, X-rays, and CT images on a large screen.

More active participants

- The evaluation showed that there were longer discussions, the participants were more active, and they absorbed more of the information and decisions in teleconferences than in the conventional conferences, says Bridget Kane.

An important reason might be that the discussions were more structured because teleconferences are perceived as a little more formal than conventional group meetings. After completing these meetings using teleconferencing, there were in fact no reports of disagreements or points which were unclear with regard to treatment.

Over 50% more said that they had grasped the relevant information in the discussions, and almost twice as many as at conventional meetings reported that they both understood and agreed with the medical decisions.

Greater confidence in the treatment

The doctors who took part in teleconferences were also more positive about the further treatment, and were more confident that the patient's condition would improve as a result of the treatment they had agreed on.

- But we have not looked at whether this in fact led to improvements for patients. It looks as though the technology might positively reinforce the doctors' outlook, without this necessarily being based on facts about the patient's condition.

- However, we will not know whether this is correct before we have studied this more closely. Teleconferences seem to create a psychological distance which we must investigate, concludes Kane.