Communication support: a challenge for ICT in health care.

Communication makes up a very important part of the daily practice of health professionals. Current trends in health care indicate that this will even increase. However, the explicit application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in order to support communication is relatively rare. This leaves a great potential of ICT in health care unused. The clinical informatics group at the Leiden University Medical Centre has established a research program which aims at eliciting, analysing, and specifying requirements for communication supporting ICT-applications in health care. Several research projects are part of this program already. Two of these, that focus on supporting a specific kind of health professional/client communication, are discussed in this paper against the background of the research program.