DIALOG - A Tool for Team Interactive Organizational Learning in the Healthcare Industry

We propose to develop DIALOG, an environment for collaborative decision making that will enable health care providers and administrators to model, learn, and reason about their business enterprise. DIALOG will utilize a user-friendly, pen- and gesture-based graphical interface, and will enable "any time/any place" collaboration over shared digital libraries and dynamic "microworld" simulations. It also will support team interactive decision analysis over information. DIALOG will be optimized for use with a variety of new workgroup technologies, such as wireless LANs, mobile tablet computers, broadband ATM networks, and large, interactive display LiveBoards. The framework will allow everyone within an enterprise to gain a shared understanding of the "big picture" regarding the organization's goals, purposes, and operations. It will help people identify potential process improvements, communicate requirements among departments and individuals, and make informed organizational decisions. This project responds to a critical need to use our emerging computing and telecommunications technologies to improve decision making, increase organizational efficiencies, and improve global competitiveness for U.S. corporations. DIALOG is an innovative new approach to enabling the learning that is required to improve fundamental business processes, and has strong potential for commercial success within the U.S. healthcare industry and across a broad range of U.S. industries.