Nursing intranet for communication and knowledge management.

Leveraging on staff's familiarity with the global Internet and the Hospital Information Technology infrastructure, nurses at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) first took the challenge to design and develop an in-house intranet, which serves as a communication network in 1997. This nursing intranet was further enhanced using multi-media technology to develop e-learning modules on nursing specialty, skill-based, and audio slides presentation training. In addition, it also serves as a repository for policies, operational, nursing procedure documents and catalogue of forms, patient instruction pamphlets. Nurses can easily print all these forms and teaching brochures on-line. The nursing intranet offers cost-effective solution for distributing information through virtual network and accessible from over 700 points in SGH, 6 other affiliated medical institutions, and from nurses' homes too.