The need scoping and prioritization of the medical team to integrate new technologies for inpatient rehabilitation services

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: To explore unmet needs for inpatient rehabilitation services and assess the relative preference of new technology versus current practice by a structured decision-making model. METHODS: The clinical needs for in-patient rehabilitation care were explored by an in-depth interview with the aid of a service blueprint in 2 affiliated hospitals of a university. A questionnaire was constructed according to the analytic hierarchical process (AHP) model to make pairwise comparison between the clinical needs for prioritization. The preference between traditional practice and new technology to fulfill the criteria was compared. RESULTS: Seven categories of unmet needs were summarized through focus group interviews to construct a questionnaire for the analytic hierarchical process. The results showed that assessment and recording ranked first as important applications, followed by clinical alerts, implementation of rehabilitation, patient/family education, team communication, schedule management and finally, the localization of patients/workers. The subjects from different professional disciplines had different rankings of preference weight, reflecting the individualized needs related to their practice. In addition, the subjects placed a higher preference on new technology than on current practice in all the categories. CONCLUSION: The preference global weights on the needs to integrate new technologies into rehabilitation services aims to improve efficiency, safety and outcome. Further studies are needed to explore the needs from the perspective of the patients.