Using OneDrive in MS Office, many people can collaborate on a document. This is a useful feature in this day and age of remote work. It certainly is a time and money saver as well. Advocate Health Care in Illinois has used the online collaboration in Office 365 and has saved “U.S. $53.8 million† from our information worker productivity gains alone. For example, the Forrester analysis found that we’re saving $2.2 million over three years† in time and transportation costs” (Microsoft.com, 2017). With the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine became a lifesaver. In an article in NEJM, “A central strategy for health care surge control is “forward triage” — the sorting of patients before they arrive in the emergency department (ED). Direct-to-consumer (or on-demand) telemedicine, a 21st-century approach to forward triage that allows patients to be efficiently screened, is both patient-centered and conducive to self-quarantine, and it protects patients, clinicians, and the community from exposure.” At the height of the pandemic, telemedicine was widely used. Being able to collaborate with others is important in healthcare today. Using Microsoft Teams is another method that has been helpful today. Although Microsoft Teams has been used in my workplace, I’ve not personally used it. Being able to work with colleagues all over the world has become possible with online collaboration.

References:

Hollander, & Carr, B. G. (2020). Virtually Perfect? Telemedicine for Covid-19. The New England Journal of Medicine, 382(18), 1679–1681. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2003539

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2017/03/20/improving-patient-health-through-collaboration-innovation-and-efficiency-with-office-365/