Here is an enterprise 2.0 success story from Ken Cohn’s new book, Collaborate for Success! Breakthrough Strategies for Engaging Physicians, Nurses, and Hospital Executives. This book is written to enable physicians and other healthcare providers to reframe assumptions and collaborate better to achieve outcomes not possible when operating in silos. As an occasional patient married to a healthcare provider, I know that both sides need this type of help in the US. The focus on increased collaboration within the organization is a good place to pilot enterprise 2.0 approaches and the work he describes provides an example of a successful start.

One chapter, Building Community and Collaboration with Blogs, outlines an example where Glen Mohr and Ken worked with a major health care facility to implement a platform for better collaboration. I was involved in the very start of this project and co-authored the chapter but it is really the work of Ken and Glen. Kathleen Gilroy was also involved in the project. The work takes place in a major US hospital where a senior advisory panel of physicians faced the task of developing strategic recommendations for the next five years. They met regularly and heard presentations for all major department heads.

A blog platform was created to record meeting minutes, link to key documents, provide a means to record their observations of current work processes, and allow for commentary by panel members on these meetings, documents, and observations. Access was limited to panel members, but the blog made it available on a 24/7 basis from any terminal in the hospital, office, or home.

The blog thus allowed panel members to interact outside the meetings, as new ideas surfaced and new issues appeared. The secure, password-protected site allowed members to engage in candid discussion. The blog also provided a convenient distribution point for downloading and commenting on material relevant to department presenters and their reports. The best came at the end as the blog’s search engine facilitated the creation of final report writing. A large amount of data had accumulated in eight months of meetings.

Panel members could now search the archive to find recurring themes, as well as specific comments and examples that otherwise might have faded in memory or have been too time-consuming to locate in the minutes or reports buried in emails. The report was completed more efficiently and with greater use of all the data to achieve a more comprehensive, consensus-based set of recommendations. As one panel member said, “Having this organizational tool allowed me to recognize important themes that were relevant to the majority of the medical staff.” It also provides a simple and clear instance of the benefits of taking the new, more open, web 2.0 tools and techniques inside the enterprise. It started small and demonstrated value through helping an important initiative.