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MTR ® Electronic Whiteboards

Caregivers have all the information they need at their fingertips or at a glance.

“Now anyone can answer a call light... since key information is displayed at the nurse station whiteboard including allergy, fall risk, and isolation. It creates an environment that fosters teamwork.” -M. V.M., Vice President Nursing and Quality

The data you need, the way you want to see it

MTR ® Electronic Whiteboards let you enter patient data once and it automatically updates all MTR ® displays, everywhere.

Shift changes, assignments, and rounding status update automatically throughout the system.

Information shown is dependent on team requirements and customized by the team to have the look and feel that works for them.

Flexible options allow users to choose views and data on the device they want to use.

HIPAA compliant and secure

Different public and private views keep staff up to date and patient data private and secure

Your nursing team and other staff see rounding status, assignments, and high level patient data in private on existing hospital workstations, while public facing views can show the same information in a HIPAA compliant way on large electronic displays at the Nursing Station or throughout the unit.

The use of icons, abbreviations, or descriptions depend on where the data is being displayed, and patient names can be shown, hidden, or disguised per your hospital's standards.

Patient privacy is protected.

Remove barriers to purposeful hourly rounding

“Our team can see at a glance the patient that needs to be seen next. Not only has it reduced call lights but it has really developed a team spirit. Everyone wants to make sure all the patients are seen for their rounds even if it isn't 'their turn'.” -D.A., Director of Clinical Operations

Dynamic Rounding Functionality

MTR ® Whiteboards can be displayed with rounding or be rounding only.

Highly visible, easy to read, and silent care team rounding cues reduce stress and alarm fatigue and save time for staff.

Purposeful rounding with MTR ® Automated Hourly Rounding means your team can stop worrying about the 'hour' and focus on the patient.

Credit for patient time is automatic, so no more end of bed logs either!

Easily access meaningful reports and assignment information

Managers can view assignments, rounding information, and key risk and safety data for individual departments or the whole hospital at once without ever having to leave their desk.

Quick reports can verify rounding when a patient or family member is concerned.

Team leaders can easily assess real time status of rounding at a glance.

Trends can help with a truer understanding of patients’ needs and acuity level for future assignments.

Good Communication is Possible!

MTR ® Electronic Whiteboards don’t box you into a set of outside vendor standards

You set the rules.

No more pages and pages of screens and paperwork to update just to share a small amount of information.

Software is designed BY and FOR healthcare professionals to be easy and efficient. MTR ® software can connect to your existing EMR for fast and reliable, continuous updates.

Reduce repetitive tasks and paperwork and keep a log of EVERYTHING ever shown or changed on the displays, who changed it, and when. (Just try to do that with a dry-erase whiteboard!)

A Preventative Approach to Healthcare.

IMPROVE HCAHPS

Satisfaction

FALL PREVENTION

Clearly Defined Fall Risk

Morse Scale

Nurse Bell Reduction

As Accurate as Your EHR

Increase in HCAHPS Scores – Harnessing the power of the simple whiteboard

Read more about the 3rd party research to provide safety, communication and satisfaction to your patients.

No Training Required Means No Added Workflow

Digital Patient Room Whiteboard Display

MEDI+SIGN patient room whiteboards replace traditional dry-erase boards in hospital patient rooms. With information that is up-to-the-minute accurate, the patients, their families and staff can benefit from knowing their pain-level, mobility status, fall risk, plan for the day and much more. The patient does not need to learn how to use complicated keyboards or user interfaces and the nurses do not need to learn new software. Simply document into the EHR and MEDI+SIGN does the rest.

Customizable for Your Organization or Individual Unit Initiatives

Digital patient room door display.

MEDI+SIGN digital door displays alert physicians, nurses and other hospital staff of important information prior to entering each patient’s room. Up-to-the-minute accurate information, including Isolations, nurse assignments, dietary restrictions and other alerts make using the door display as intuitive as looking at a clock. Electronic Patient Room Door Displays are ADA compliant, can be made to match the hospitals aesthetics and come standard with tactile room identifications and international braille.

Fostering an Environment of Safety and Healing

Digital Nurse Station Monitoring Display

MEDI+SIGN digital displays for nurses’ stations update the care team on round and pain medication schedules, as well as the patient’s pain level and pain level trend. At a glance, staff can see all safety conflicts in the patient room with Anti-Fall™ technology.

Critical Information and Alerts in Real-Time

Digital exam room whiteboards for emergency departments.

MEDI+SIGN digital exam room whiteboards for Emergency Departments bring critical information and alerts in real time to patients in emergency exam rooms. Housed in a smaller package to better fit the tight spaces in these rooms, MEDI+SIGN’s digital exam room whiteboard solution is engineered to be most effective for information needed during the short period of time the patient will be in the Emergency Department.

A Preventative Approach to Healthcare

Anti-Fall™ Technology

When paired with smart hospital beds, MEDI+SIGN can help reduce the frequency of patient falls in hospitals. With patent-pending algorithms, MEDI+SIGN can determine the fall risk of the patient, check the condition of the bed and display any safety conflicts to all of the MEDI+SIGN display solutions.

Want to learn more?

for Education

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Google Jamboard is winding down in 2024. Please visit the Help Center for more information.

Jamboard is winding down. learn more, bring learning to life with jamboard.

Spark students to learn, collaborate, and engage in active new ways with the Jamboard mobile app or 55-inch cloud-powered whiteboard.

Get students collaborating in innovative ways

Boost student collaboration and engagement with the Jamboard app — powered by Google Cloud. Student tablet users can access a suite of rich editing tools to collaborate with students or educators. You can even access it from a web browser too.

Simple as a whiteboard, but smarter

Jamboard is one smart display. Quickly pull in images from a Google search, save work to the cloud automatically, use the easy-to-read handwriting and shape recognition tool, and draw with a stylus but erase with your finger – just like a whiteboard.

Share ideas in brainstorms or lectures

Jamboard makes learning visible and accessible to all collaborators on the jam session. Plus, It’s easy to present your jams in real time through Meet, allowing for easy sharing or making real-world connections.

Students can jam from anywhere

Educators can engage all students in the learning process, whether working together in a traditional classroom, a group seminar setting, or through distance learning. The Jamboard app for Android and iOS makes it easy for students and educators to join in on the creativity from their phone, tablet, or Chromebook.

“With tools for creativity and curation like Jamboard, all students have the ability to find the answers and present them just as a teacher would. It gives every student a voice regardless of their level.” Steven Hope , Head of Independent Learning, Leeds City College

Enable smarter learning through the cloud

Supercharge your lesson plans and open up new ways for your students to collaborate with the Jamboard display.

Spark real-time education and collaboration

Sketch ideas and lessons whiteboard-style on the incredibly responsive and accurate stunning 55-inch, 4k display. Drop images, add notes, and grab assets directly from the web, or pull in work from Docs, Sheets, and Slides — all while collaborating with students or classmates from anywhere.

Portable, powerful and ready for the classroom

As the focal point for creativity in the classroom, it’s easy to move around with its purpose-built portable stand and single-cable setup. The stylus and eraser don’t require pairing — ensuring you never run out of ink or batteries.

Explore top questions about Jamboard

How many people can use jamboard at once.

Jamboard supports up to 16 touchpoints at once on a single device. An entire class can join the same jam from other Jamboards and phones and tablets with the Jamboard app.

What are Jamboard's specifications?

View the Jamboard spec-sheet ( PDF ). For more information, visit the Jamboard Help Center .

See innovative ways schools are using Jamboard

Hazelwood School Leads The Future Of Education With Jamboard

In Surrey, England, Hazelwood School launches an innovative, agile learning space to advance digital literacy through emerging technologies including the use of Google Jamboard.

How Mason City Community Schools use Jamboards to give all students a voice

Mason City educators address gaps in the district’s technology access with the use of Jamboards to foster collaboration between teachers and students alike.

Leeds City College uses Jamboard to inspire teachers and students to share what they’ve learned

Steven Hope, Leeds City College’s Head of Independent Learning, used Jamboards to power student learning zones — encouraging students to learn independently while inspiring creativity and collaboration.

Get started with Jamboard

Explore these helpful resources to get up and running with Jamboard in your classroom and beyond.

• View all resources

Introduction to Jamboard app

Get a brief introduction into the Jamboard app including features, tools, and more.

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5 tips for using Jamboard

Explore five tips from teachers to get the most out of your jamboard experience.

First day of Jamboard guide

This guide helps you get up and running with Jamboard through group learning with other teachers.

Sample Jamboard exercises

Discover helpful group exercises to build your comfort with the tools and capabilities of Jamboard.

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Transform Care with Interactive Digital Boards

Revolutionize patient care with VisiCareHD™ Digital Boards, your high-tech solution to communication in healthcare settings. These electronic, interactive boards offer real-time patient and staffing updates, eliminating the reliance on low-tech whiteboards in each hospital room. Update with Digital Boards automatically synchronize to your EPIC electronic health records. Enhance efficiency, communication, and patient care with VisiCareHD™ Digital Boards today.

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Our sleek 24-hour digital screens provide real-time patient-centered information and easy-to-use interface, accessed through a clinical web portal.

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Seamlessly integrate our systems with EHRs like Epic for effortless data migration, streamlining healthcare exchange and improving care coordination

Custom Design

Elevate your facility's identity with our in-house design team's custom graphics. Tailored layouts enhance your branding and regulatory compliance.

Digital Board Benefits

Always Available

Industrial-grade displays operate 24/7 for continuous access.

Independent Display

Improve patient satisfaction with dedicated displays.

Streamlined Management

Reduce hours spent on manual updates with efficient communication features.

Delivering Healthcare in the Digital Age

Our Digital Boards are compatible with EPIC EHR system, ensuring vendor-neutral adaptability for hassle-free implementation.

Seamless EHR Integration

We are experts in enhancing the patient experience through our cutting-edge communication boards.

Patient Experience Specialists

Trust in our Digital Boards for safe and precise patient data sourcing, promoting a higher standard of care.

Secure and Accurate Data

Experience improved health information exchange, fostering better communication and collaboration among healthcare professionals.

Enhanced Health Data Exchange

Let Us Find The Right Solution for You Now.

Real-time Care Guidance

VisiCareHD™ Digital Boards have been specifically designed to enhance communication between patients and caregivers within technologically advanced healthcare settings. These boards are a valuable tool for hospitals seeking to elevate patient care quality, enhance patient satisfaction, and boost staff efficiency.

The Digital Patient Board displays essential information, including the patient’s name, current care provider, attending physician, interactive pain management reference, medication details, and other conventional whiteboard indicators. The system can automatically update this information as clinicians log into the patient’s chart during shift changes and as updates occur in the patient’s record.

Increase staff and patient satisfaction scores by implementing this cutting-edge solution to patient care.

Join the Next Generation of Patient Care

Our High Definition (HD) graphics not only captivate but also enhance patient safety while minimizing errors. The Autofill information feature pulls designated data directly from your EHR, presenting real-time updates on the Patient Board. This not only saves nurses precious time but also ensures patients, care teams, and families stay informed. Boost patient satisfaction scores by periodically refreshing your design.

Our expert art team crafts custom digital graphics to align with your hospital’s branding and meet department-specific requirements. These graphics guide patients through their healthcare journey and actively engage them in their care plan. Our custom layouts cater to care team identification, clinical details, care coordination, progress notes, and vital patient safety information, including fall risk, mobility, pain levels, and comfort goals.

  Watch the Digital Board Demo for Inpatient Departments today and transform your patient communication experience.

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• Determine the scope of your Digital Board with our Complexity Level Guide.
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Review the Complexity Level Guide

Our Patient Boards offer custom content fields to match your facility’s practices. Use our complexity guide to determine the right content levels for effective visual communication.

What Can VisiCare™ Boards Do for Your Facility?

VisiCare™ Patient Communication Boards are the key to transforming your healthcare facility. They boost market share by improving loyalty, retention, and public image, while enhancing employee morale, promoting cost-effective care, and embodying your mission.

Explore our comprehensive patient communication solutions, including:

• VisiCare™ Glass Boards  for elegant, collaborative patient care.
• VisiCare™ Plexi Boards for modern design & clear communication.
• VisiCare™ White Boards for low-tech, adaptable solutions.
• VisiCareHD™ Digital Boards for real-time information delivery.
• VisiCare™ Decal Boards for flexible room enhancement.
• VisiCare™ Safety Boards for high risk areas, one-piece security.

Unite your workforce around a strong vision–Choose VisiCare™ to elevate patient satisfaction, streamline communication, and enhance safety with easy infection control solutions in your healthcare facility!

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Enhancing Efficiency, Collaboration, and Patient Engagement

At HCI, we understand the critical role that efficient communication and streamlined workflows play in providing exceptional patient care. That's why we have developed the HCI Patient Digital Whiteboard, a comprehensive solution that optimizes operational efficiency, promotes interdisciplinary collaboration, and enhances patient engagement.

With our digital whiteboard, healthcare providers can access patient information, manage tasks, and communicate seamlessly, all in one centralized platform. The interactive features of the whiteboard enable caregivers to easily track patient progress, monitor vital signs, and provide real-time updates to the care team.

By empowering patients with personalized education materials and entertainment options, the HCI Patient Digital Whiteboard enhances patient engagement, leading to improved patient satisfaction and better health outcomes.

Digital Whiteboard Configurations & Modules

With our deep experience, HCI has developed more than 50 customizable modules to address the specific needs and challenges faced by healthcare organizations, ensuring a comprehensive and tailored solution for each unique client and setting. 

Our Digital Whiteboard Software is compatible with HCI Hardware (Portrait or Landscape Mode) and with Leading Healthcare TV Providers.

HCI Interactive Digital Whiteboards are available in standard TV sizes: 22", 27", 32", 43", 55", 65", and 75".

The HCI Advantage

Custom branding & personalization.

HCI Whiteboards offer the advantage of custom branding, allowing healthcare organizations to personalize the digital whiteboard system with their own logo, colors, and visual elements. This helps create a consistent brand experience and fosters a sense of familiarity for both staff and patients.

Care Planning

HCI Whiteboards facilitate care planning by providing a centralized platform for care teams to collaborate, document care plans, and track progress. The interactive nature of the whiteboard allows for real-time updates, ensuring that everyone involved in the patient's care has access to the most current information, leading to more coordinated and effective care delivery.

Smarter Integrations

HCI Whiteboards integrate seamlessly with other hospital information systems, such as electronic medical records (EMRs) and nurse call systems. This enables automatic data synchronization and real-time information updates, reducing manual data entry and enhancing data accuracy. By consolidating data from multiple sources, caregivers can make informed decisions quickly and efficiently.

Alerts & Notifications

HCI Whiteboards provide timely alerts and notifications to care teams, ensuring that critical information is communicated promptly. These alerts can range from patient-specific alerts, such as fall risk or isolation precautions, to general announcements or reminders. By keeping everyone informed and aware, the whiteboards help improve patient safety and care coordination.

Enhanced Communications

HCI Whiteboards enhance communication among care teams, patients, and families. They offer features such as messaging systems, video conferencing capabilities, and real-time updates, enabling efficient and effective communication. This leads to improved collaboration, better patient engagement, and enhanced patient satisfaction.

Flexible Layouts

HCI Whiteboards offer flexible layouts that can be customized to meet the specific needs of different care settings and workflows. Care teams can arrange and organize information based on their preferences and priorities, ensuring that the whiteboard displays the most relevant and essential information at a glance. This flexibility enhances usability and usability, making the whiteboard system adaptable to various healthcare environments.

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How Effective Patient Communication Boards Improve Safety & HCAHPS Scores

Patient communication boards play a pivotal role in enhancing both patient satisfaction and a hospital's HCAHPS score and star rating.

Patient communication boards play a pivotal role in enhancing both patient satisfaction and a hospital's HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) score and star rating. These boards serve as instrumental tools in fostering effective and patient-centered communication within healthcare settings.

Here is a comprehensive list of DOs and DON'Ts that will be invaluable when devising an effective patient communication board process for your hospital.

Outline of today’s blog post:

Introduction: Patient Communication Boards

Why patient communication boards are important.

• The 8 DOs for a Successful Patient Communication Board
• The 6 DON’Ts to Avoid Common Communication Board Pitfalls

Patient communication boards have become a well-established standard practice in hospitals and considered an integral part of patient centered care. However, despite their widespread use, many questions still surround their effectiveness and impact. This blog aims to address these uncertainties and provide insights into optimizing the use of patient communication boards.

→ Do you ever question the effectiveness of your hospital's communication boards? 

→ Are you unsure whether they genuinely contribute to patient safety and enhance the overall patient experience? 

With the constant pressures faced by healthcare professionals, it's natural to wonder if these boards are just another form of "busy" work .

Ensuring consistent utilization of communication boards poses its own challenges. How can you be certain that this valuable tool is being utilized consistently across your hospital?

In this blog post, we will explore these questions and provide a structured approach to achieving effective utilization of patient communication boards, improving HCAHPS star results and assisting in building a patient centered care model.

Join us on this journey as we delve into the world of patient communication boards and unlock their potential for improving communication, patient safety, and the overall healthcare experience

Patient communication boards is a multifaceted approach that serves many purposes such as patient safety, patient satisfaction, and as a byproduct, the hospital’s reputation and ratings.

PATIENT SAFETY: 

Patient communication boards improve patient safety in hospitals in several ways: 

Enhance Communication Between Patient and Care Team:

These boards enhance communication between patients, nurses, doctors  and other hospital staff by providing a consistent visual and accessible means of conveying important information. Patients can use the boards to express their needs, concerns,  enabling healthcare professionals to address them promptly.

Bridge Language Barriers:

Patient communication boards help overcome language barriers, ensuring that patients with limited English proficiency can still effectively communicate their needs.

Visual Safety Reminders:

These boards serve as a constant reminder of important safety protocols and procedures, such as fall prevention, thereby promoting adherence to best practices and reducing the risk of preventable accidents.

Empower Patient’s Engagement:

Patient communication boards facilitate engagement and participation in the care process, empowering patients to actively participate in their own care and safety by providing feedback, reporting concerns, or asking questions.

Improve Continuity of Care:

These boards improve the continuity of care by allowing different healthcare providers to communicate and share relevant information about the patient, ensuring a comprehensive and coordinated approach to care.

PATIENT SATISFACTION: 

Patient satisfaction plays a crucial role in ensuring a positive healthcare experience. Patient communication boards serve as a powerful tool to contribute to improved patient satisfaction. 

Empowering Patients: 

These boards provide patients with a platform to actively engage in their care, enabling them to express their needs, preferences, and concerns, thus fostering a positive and personalized experience.

Effective Communication:

By facilitating clear interactions between patients and healthcare staff, these boards reduce misunderstandings and ensure patients have a complete understanding of their care plan, leading to more informed decision-making and enhanced satisfaction.

Visual Reminders:

Patient communication boards display vital information such as the names and roles of care team members, upcoming procedures, and important reminders, helping patients stay informed, organized, and reassured throughout their hospital stay.

Reassurance to Families and Friends:

These boards offer transparency and valuable information to loved ones, enabling them to access essential details about the patient's care plan, progress, or specific instructions, fostering trust and comfort in the quality of care provided.

REPUTATION & RATINGS (HCAHPS Scores & Star Ratings):

Patient communication boards play a pivotal role in enhancing both patient satisfaction and a hospital's HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) score and star rating . These boards serve as instrumental tools in fostering effective and patient-centered communication in hospitals.

Communication Domain: 

HCAHPS includes a communication domain, which evaluates how well healthcare providers communicate with patients. Patient communication boards directly contribute to this domain by demonstrating the hospital's commitment to effective communication practices.

Responsiveness of Hospital Staff: 

The "responsiveness" domain of HCAHPS assesses how promptly hospital staff respond to patient needs. By utilizing communication boards, healthcare providers can address patient concerns more efficiently, leading to improved HCAHPS scores.

Hospital Environment: 

Patient communication boards contribute to the overall hospital environment, which is a crucial factor affecting HCAHPS scores. A well-organized and patient-oriented environment, facilitated by the presence of communication boards, positively influences patients' perceptions of the hospital's care quality.

Care Transitions: 

Effective communication boards can also enhance the coordination of care during transitions, such as shift changes or transfer to different units. Improved care transitions are associated with higher HCAHPS scores and contribute to a hospital's overall star rating.

As you can see, patient communication boards play a significant role in promoting patient satisfaction by empowering patients, enhancing communication, and fostering transparency.

Moreover, their implementation positively impacts a hospital's HCAHPS score and star rating by contributing to key domains such as communication, responsiveness, hospital environment, and care transitions.

As hospitals continue to prioritize patient-centered care, communication boards remain an indispensable tool in achieving these objectives while bolstering overall patient experience and organizational performance.

#The 8 Dos of a Successful Patient Communication Board

1. make it readable.

Patient communication boards can become excessively cluttered, making them unusable. It is crucial to choose which specific pieces of content will be displayed on the board.

 → “Does it hold significance for the patient, their family, and friends?” 

 → “Does it provide value to the hospital care team, nurses, physicians, therapists, and other  support staff?" 

The board must be positioned directly within the patient's line of sight.

2. Design it to be Updated

Change is an inherent law of the universe. Don’t assume after countless meetings, you will agree on a perfect communication board template. Instead, it is essential to create a board design that allows for easy updates and modifications. By employing an insert-based approach, information can be swiftly and cheaply revised whenever needed. 

This framework also facilitates tailoring boards to meet the unique requirements of specialty units.

3. Attach the Pen to the Board

It is imperative to secure a dry erase marker permanently to the board. Regrettably, as a patient myself, I have witnessed well-intentioned staff members bypassing the communication board due to the unavailability of a pen.

4. Tackle the Appointments List Last 

Maintaining an up-to-date list of appointments can prove challenging as it remains subject to frequent changes. There is a likelihood that the list may either fall out of sync or remain blank, leading to potential frustrations. 

There is huge value in making the appointments list work. However, consider incorporating this feature once all other aspects of your communication boards have been adequately addressed and implemented.

5. Include Hourly Rounding Tracking

Communication boards should include the tracking of hourly rounding. (Probably every two hours during the night.) Consistently conducting this activity can prove challenging. 

However, it holds significant benefits as it instills a sense of comfort in the patient, their family, and friends, knowing that regular check-ins are taking place. 

Conversely, if this practice is neglected, it may lead to complaints about perceived indifference. Patients tend to observe their surroundings closely, and the presence or absence of board usage can influence their perceptions of the hospital experience.

Therefore, documenting hourly rounding anywhere other than on the communication board is discouraged as it can be time-consuming and unnecessary. A simple checkmark on the board suffices to mark the completion of the task.

Read our latest blog post on Improving Patient Satisfaction with the 5 Ps of Proactive & Purposeful Hourly Rounding

6. Check During Nurse Leader Rounds

As part of the daily nurse leader rounds (Care Check - Inpatient) process, it is imperative to include a standard question to the patient concerning the status of their communication board. It has been observed that certain patients may express satisfaction with its content even when it has not been appropriately filled out. 

Watch this brief 2-minute video that exemplifies the philosophy of “Don't Stop at Yes," emphasizing the importance of thorough inquiry and follow-up beyond initial affirmations. 

7. Independently Assess the Effectiveness of the Board Apart from the Patient

During the routine nurse leader inpatient rounds (Care Check), it is essential to incorporate an independent evaluation of the communication board's effectiveness as part of your assessment. You may find that observation scores significantly differ from patient feedback. This variance underscores the inherent challenges in obtaining accurate feedback from patients during their inpatient stay.

The nurse leader should evaluate the completeness of the board as an easy way to identify improvement and education needs for staff responsible for updating.

An easy way to assure communication boards are consistently updated is the foundation of the sustainability of the approach over time.

8. Updated the Board Early Every Morning

It is crucial to incorporate into the nursing team's routine the responsibility of updating the entire communication board promptly each morning. 

Out-of-date information on the board can convey a lack of attentiveness to the patient and significantly impact their perception of the quality of care they receive. For instance, displaying "Thursday" on the board when it is, in fact, "Friday" is unacceptable and must be avoided.

Well executed communication board use has an enormous impact on patient satisfaction. We’ve summarized these 8 key components in this brief 4-minute video:

Want to see the rest of the videos in this series? There are 8 more short-form videos from our series called The 9 Approaches to Patient Satisfaction, watch them here, for free.

The 6 Don’ts to Avoid Common Communication Board Pitfalls

Note: While considering the DON'TS, there can be a case made for including them on the patient communication board. However it is essential to carefully evaluate their relevance. In practice, maintaining the current status of such information can be challenging. 

Therefore, it is crucial to establish a robust basic approach and a well-defined nursing routine before considering the expansion of the process. This ensures a solid foundation for effective implementation.

1. Avoid Including Positions Beyond the Essential Care Team

It is advisable not to expand the number of positions displayed for the care team on the communication board beyond essential roles such as a nurse, a doctor, and a patient care technician. While incorporating the respiratory therapist and social worker could be beneficial, the challenge lies in maintaining the accuracy of the additional team members' information. Realistically, the likelihood of achieving this consistently is not high.

2. Avoid Including Ambulation and a Turning Wheel

The incorporation of ambulation and a turning wheel into the system holds great potential provided it is actively utilized and kept up-to-date. However, a pertinent question arises: what is the likelihood of this implementation becoming a reality in practice?

3. Carefully Consider Including Patient Goals

Having a dedicated "patient goals" section on the communication board can be highly advantageous if consistently updated every day. For instance, a key question to include could be, "What is the most important thing we can do for you today?" However, it is important to acknowledge that maintaining daily updates for this section can be quite challenging . Once a goal is documented on the board, it becomes imperative to ensure its fulfillment, adding to the complexity of its daily upkeep.

4. Avoid Including Hand Hygiene

Certain boards and wall posters display the message, "Make sure we wash our hands." Such communication can inadvertently imply to patients that it is their responsibility to ensure healthcare providers fulfill their duties correctly and maintain safety protocols. While the importance of hand washing cannot be overstated, it is vital to recognize that the onus for this practice does not lie with the patients; rather, it is the responsibility of the healthcare providers to uphold these standards diligently.

5. Avoid Including ID Prompts

Similarly, wall posters include the message, "Make sure we ask your name and date of birth." However, one might question the appropriateness of such a statement. Undeniably, verifying a patient's identity is of utmost importance. Nevertheless, it is crucial to emphasize that this responsibility falls squarely on the healthcare providers and not on the patients. Patients should not be burdened with ensuring this verification ; rather, it is the duty of the healthcare professionals to execute this process diligently and accurately.

6. Avoid Including Appointment Lists

While it may be tempting to include today's appointments on communication boards, it is crucial to assess the nursing staff's ability to maintain accuracy consistently. Incorporating appointments can be advantageous if the staff is confident in their capability to keep the information up-to-date, as schedules tend to undergo frequent changes. However, if appointments are included on the board but not kept accurate, it may have a detrimental impact on the perception of care, outweighing any potential benefits. Thoughtful consideration should be given before making such additions.

Key Takeaways:

1) Proven Strategy

Numerous studies have consistently confirmed the significant value of effectively employing communication boards to enhance patient-staff communication. Even without considering these studies, the benefits are self-evident.

2) Check for Consistency

As part of best practices, check to ensure the consistent use of the patient communication board. This can be achieved without additional resources by including in nurse leader daily rounding process.

3) Simple Design

A carefully designed communication board template should be established and subsequently streamlined for optimal effectiveness.

4) Patient Perception

Actively seeking feedback from patients regarding their perception of the communication board's utility is essential. This inclusive approach allows for continuous improvement and ensures that the communication boards cater to the specific needs and preferences of the patients.

5) Patient Satisfaction

By promoting transparent and open communication, these boards foster trust and collaboration between patients and healthcare providers, leading to a positive patient-provider relationship and ultimately higher levels of satisfaction

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• Do bedside whiteboards enhance communication in hospitals? An exploratory multimethod study of patient and nurse perspectives. Goyal A, Glanzman H, Quinn M, Tur K, Singh S, Winter S, Snyder A, Chopra V. BMJ Qual Saf. 2020 Oct;29(10):1-2. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2019-010208. Epub 2019 Nov 6. PMID: 31694874
• Family Perspectives on Whiteboard Use and Recommendations for Improved Practices. Cholli P, Meyer EC, David M, Moonan M, Mahoney J, Hession-Laband E, Zurakowski D, Bell SK. Hosp Pediatr. 2016 Jul;6(7):426-30. doi: 10.1542/hpeds.2015-0182. PMID: 27354362
• Patient whiteboards to improve patient-centred care in the hospital. Tan M, Hooper Evans K, Braddock CH 3rd, Shieh L. Postgrad Med J. 2013 Oct;89(1056):604-9. doi: 10.1136/postgradmedj-2012-131296. Epub 2013 Aug 6. PMID: 23922397
• Do Bedside Visual Tools Improve Patient and Caregiver Satisfaction? A Systematic Review of the Literature. Goyal AA, Tur K, Mann J, Townsend W, Flanders SA, Chopra V. J Hosp Med. 2017 Nov;12(11):930-936. doi: 10.12788/jhm.2871. PMID: 29091982 Review.
• The recent evolution of patient care rounds in pediatric teaching hospitals in the United States and Canada. Van Blarcom J, Chevalier A, Drum B, Eyberg S, Vukin E, Good B. Hosp Pract (1995). 2021 Oct;49(sup1):431-436. doi: 10.1080/21548331.2021.1977561. Epub 2021 Sep 21. PMID: 3448852

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Supporting Patient Care in the Emergency Department with a Computerized Whiteboard System

Dominik aronsky.

a Department of Biomedical Informatics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN

b Department of Emergency Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN.

Kevin Lanaghan

Corey m. slovis.

Efficient information management and communication within the emergency department (ED) is essential to providing timely and high-quality patient care. The ED whiteboard (census board) usually serves as an ED’s central access point for operational and patient-related information. This article describes the design, functionality, and experiences with a computerized ED whiteboard, which has the ability to display relevant operational and patient-related information in real time. Embedded functionality, additional whiteboard views, and the integration with ED and institutional information system components, such as the computerized patient record or the provider order entry system, provide rapid access to more detailed information. As an information center, the computerized whiteboard supports our ED environment not only for providing patient care, but also for operational, educational, and research activities.

Introduction

Efficient information management and communication are essential for providing high-quality clinical care. Compared to other health care settings, the Emergency Department (ED) is one of the most information-intensive environments. 1,2 Ever increasing patient volumes, an aging population, high occupancy levels, decreased availability of inpatient beds, nursing shortages, and increased patient complexity all require ED staff members to assimilate information from diverse sources to facilitate efficient information management and communication. 3–9

The ED is a challenging and dynamic environment from a clinical and operational perspective. 10 The ED staff provides episodic care for acutely ill patients for whom historical information may be limited or completely missing. 2,11 The fragmentation of patient information combined with a demanding work environment that includes frequent interruptions, handoffs, and multitasking can impact quality of care and lead to an increased error rate in the ED setting. 12,13 Information technology may help clinicians to improve care by connecting the islands of information that frequently exist in an ED. 2,14

Patient tracking boards have become an essential instrument for clinical and operational management in the ED. The “whiteboard,” also referred to as the status board, bed board, census board, or locator board, is viewed as a central and indispensable instrument for communication and information management in most EDs. Whiteboards keep track of patient information and provide an up-to-date view of the overall ED operation. Frequently large dry-erase whiteboards are used to display information. Use of color markers, large grids, abbreviations, and special icons for confidential information can make the information on dry-erase whiteboards complex, busy, and sometimes artistic.

The use of dry-erase boards to provide information to ED staff has numerous shortcomings. Providing information at a single viewing point is inefficient because ED staff members must return to one location to view, add, delete, or update information. Once information is deleted from the whiteboard, the data are permanently lost. Dry-erase whiteboards do not support the real-time tracking of patients, which helps to manage ED operations and to anticipate overcrowding. 4,15 Lack of integration with other information resources, such as the computerized patient record or a provider order entry system, may contribute to delays or even errors. 16

Dry-erase boards are likely be replaced by computerized whiteboards in many settings as information technology becomes more sophisticated. Computerization may result in more efficient information management, facilitate integration with other information sources, and lead to real-time patient tracking and ED capacity monitoring. 15–22

However, there is limited published information about the ways manual 23–25 or computerized 26–28 whiteboards can support a collaborative and integrative work environment for providing clinical care and improving operational efficiency.

We describe design considerations, implementation, and experiences using an integrated, computerized ED whiteboard. Through its ability to display relevant patient and operational information in real time the integrated whiteboard is the primary point of entry for information access in the ED.

Design Objectives

Creating an information center for the emergency department.

The whiteboard should provide staff with an overview of the ED’s entire operation and assist clinicians with fast and easy access to more detailed information about individual patients. The computerized whiteboard is much like a real time interactive spread sheet that displays data elements along three discrete axes. The vertical axis lists patient location while the horizontal axis displays patient-specific information. A third axis represents the temporal aspect of a patient moving through the ED. Our goal was to create an ED whiteboard that provides a high-level summary view, which facilitates communication, supports collaborative work, and serves as the single point of entry for obtaining more detailed information for the clinical and operational information needs of all staff members within and outside the ED who are involved in the patients’ care.

Sharing Information: Integration with Hospital Information Systems

The ED is a crossroad for many different health care processes resulting in a complex stream of information that is necessary to manage various clinical and operational tasks. An increasing number of patients, some with complex comorbidities, present to the ED in severe medical conditions that require swift decision making; however, decision making is frequently hampered by the limited ability to access and share information. Access to information in the ED requires the availability of shared resources, such as the admit-discharge-transfer system, the hospital’s clinical information system, the radiology and laboratory information system, the hospital bed management system, or regional information systems. 29–31 To ensure continuity of care and efficient operational workflow between the ED and related health care services, information from the ED needs to be accessible outside the ED. Sharing of clinical and operational information such as triage information, ordered and completed exams and interventions, discharge instructions, operational activity, biosurveillance reports, etc., is equally critical from a patient and hospital management perspective. The bidirectional sharing of information between the ED and other health care entities supports continuity of care and was viewed as one of the most important and beneficial aspects of an integrated whiteboard application.

Integrating Information Technology with Workflow

The unpredictability and volatility of ED patient volumes have a substantial impact on workflow patterns as the ED and hospital staff have to adapt to a rapidly changing environment that requires dynamic shifting of resources to meet patients’ needs. ED workflow is characterized by multitasking, frequent interruptions, and a high volume of brief communication tasks. 32–36 It is not surprising that such a vulnerable environment experiences a high level of medical errors, some of which are related to breakdowns in efficient communication.

To decrease unnecessary communication fragments our design objectives included the requirement that the “most knowledgeable” staff member be responsible for any whiteboard changes that are related to a specific workflow process. For example, the bedside nurse is most knowledgeable about when the patient physically leaves the ED. He or she is responsible for documenting the discharge on the computerized whiteboard, a process that frequently was completed by the charge nurse, who had to be interrupted to update the whiteboard. Letting the most knowledgeable individual take responsibility also supports the timely completion of the whiteboard task, which should provide more accurate data. In addition, we attempted to avoid redundant documentation of whiteboard tasks on paper or in other information systems.

Providing Decision Support

One of the advantages of a computerized whiteboard’s tracking functionality is its ability to provide real-time and post-hoc decision support for clinical, operational, educational, and financial activities. 20,21 An example of real time decision support is the calculation and display of operational statistics, which can support decisions about ED capacity and patient flow, including the management of ED overcrowding episodes. 21,37–39 The availability of an enterprise data warehouse provides the framework to analyze and trend historical data. 20,21 Combining data from the ED whiteboard and other electronic systems can create a rich information infrastructure that supports off-line decision support. An example is the generation of standardized reports and scorecards, which track clinical, operational, and educational metrics.

Facilitating Information Display and Ease of Navigation

Whiteboards provide a condensed and high-level summary view of ED information that is constantly changing. The limited amount of visual area available on a computer screen requires solutions that balance the need to display large amounts of data in a desirable level of detail with the need for a comprehensible overview that does not lead to information overload. Our design objectives included the ability to display condensed high-level summary information and to provide access to detailed information and other applications with little interface navigation and user manipulation.

Minimizing User Training

Many different staff members within and outside the ED are involved in providing care to ED patients and, therefore, need access to the whiteboard application to view, capture, or update information. The ED depends on an extensive staff network that includes rotating residents, medical students, consulting physicians, registration staff, environmental services staff, case managers, full- and part-time nurses, etc. With such a large number of staff supporting the care of ED patients, frequent staff changes are unavoidable. It was considered impractical to conduct ongoing education about whiteboard functionality. As a result, our design objectives included an intuitive interface that required minimal, on-the-job training, which can be provided by a peer.

System Description

Architecture.

The system is deployed in the adult ED of Vanderbilt University Hospital and the pediatric ED of Vanderbilt’s Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital. Both settings have clinical workstations throughout the ED, including the patients’ rooms. Two 60-inch, touch-sensitive plasma monitors display the whiteboard in the adult ED ( ▶ ). Wireless network connectivity is available in both EDs, which facilitates whiteboard access via PDAs and cart-mounted laptops.

ED treatment area: Clinicians rely on the ED information system components for communicating, documenting, and retrieving patient care information. The large, touch-sensitive monitor (arrow) provides clinicians with a central location for coordinating care, discussing high-level patient management information, and reviewing ED operational activity.

The whiteboard system is a Java-based three tier client-server application currently running on Weblogic® 8.1. The whiteboard infrastructure is based on a relational database (Oracle®, 10g) and implemented with the Java programming language, Java Server Pages, Javascript, Servlets, Cascading Style Sheets, and stateless session and message beans. A Java Message Service provides connectivity to several interfaces. The application is browser-based (Microsoft Internet Explorer®). Components are housed on fault-tolerant, redundant servers. The hospital-wide Resource Access Control Facility® (IBM®) application manages user identification and authentication.

Integration

Using a component-based approach, the whiteboard integrates or exchanges information with other applications ( ▶ ). The admit-transfer-discharge system provides patient registration data and receives patient disposition information. The ED triage component provides acuity levels, chief complaints, indicators for high acuity conditions, such as symptoms suggestive of acute coronary syndrome, or results from screening questions, such as domestic violence. The institution’s electronic medical record 40 and the provider order entry system 41 can be launched directly from the whiteboard after user authentication. The order tracker application provides the number and status of clinicians’ orders. The radiology information system supplies radiology exam status information. For patients requiring hospital admission, clinicians submit an online bed request via the ED whiteboard to the hospital’s bed board application. In turn, the hospital bed board application informs the ED whiteboard about bed status updates and diversion status information of hospital units.

Functional integration of the ED whiteboard system with other ED information system components, and the institutional information system applications.

Functionality

Limited and fully functional whiteboard versions provide users with various information access modalities. One limited whiteboard version allows operational tasks, such as signing up for patients or changing patient locations. This version operates as a screen saver and is the default view on the large screens and on computers that are closely monitored by the ED staff ( ▶ , ▶ ). On computers that cannot be monitored closely, such as those in hallways, the standard hospital screen saver is displayed preventing unauthorized individuals from viewing any patient information. A second limited whiteboard version that excludes patient information was developed for display in patient rooms and on PDAs. The two limited versions were implemented to uphold the required level of patient confidentiality even though this conflicts with the demand for ease of information access. 42,43

Display of the ED Whiteboard in a top-level view (limited functionality): Operational information is displayed at the top of the whiteboard, such as the charge and triage nurse, diversion status, or ED occupancy levels in the waiting room (right upper corner: “WR”) or the treatment area (right upper corner: “ED”). Below the operational information is the menu bar, which provides access to different whiteboard views such as waiting room, recent discharges, staff roster, “My Patients,” or the registration log. Below the menu bar patient related information is displayed. ▶ explains the patient related data elements of the ED whiteboard in more detail. For confidentiality relevant data elements were altered.

Table 1 ED Whiteboard Information Content

Access to the fully functional whiteboard version from liberally distributed clinical workstations in the ED requires a two-level user identification and authentication process. The full version is integrated with the institution’s computerized patient record allowing ED clinicians to select patients directly from the whiteboard and providing easy and rapid access to a patient’s entire electronic medical record. Time-outs on the ED computers have been set aggressively to a few minutes reflecting the computer usage pattern of a busy ED environment, which is characterized by frequent, but relatively short interactions from different users. As a browser-based application the whiteboard is accessible to eligible hospital staff outside the ED, such as the admission office, the offsite ED administrative offices, hospital administration, or research staff.

Patient-Related Demographic Information

The hospital’s admit-discharge-transfer system provides the patient’s name, medical record number, encounter number, age, sex, gender, time of arrival, and security indicator. A rapid, abbreviated registration process assures that a new patient encounter appears on the whiteboard shortly after a patient enters the ED facilities. For patients in life-threatening conditions pre-registered STAT names can be activated directly from the whiteboard. Mounted, wireless laptops facilitate registration updates and bed side registration for ambulance patients who are brought directly to a treatment room. In our environment the time of quick registration is defined as the patient’s time of ED arrival and used for tracking length of stay times.

For ease of use and patient safety concerns we prefer displaying patient names’ using the full last name and the first letter of the first name. However, the HIPAA privacy and confidentiality requirements do not routinely allow displaying patients’ names publicly. 44,45 At registration, patients are given the opportunity to sign a waiver for displaying their names on the whiteboard. The vast majority of patients consent to name display. For the rare patient who declines allowing the name to be displayed or who is considered a security risk (e.g., gun-shot wound, assault), a “No Info” label replaces the patient’s name on the whiteboard. When a qualified caregiver signs in to view medical information, the patient’s full name is displayed on the clinician’s workstation.

It is not uncommon to have two or more patients with the same or similar names in the ED. To avoid confusion over patient identities the whiteboard system applies the soundex algorithm 46 to recognize two or more patients with identical or similar sounding last names. The respective patients’ names appear automatically on a different colored background (“name alert”) alerting staff that potential for error exists for these patients. In our setting, the name alert function also provides an unanticipated benefit by notifying the registration staff when a duplicate registration has occurred.

Staff Information

All staff members are required to sign in and state their assigned role for the shift, e.g., charge nurse, attending physician, medical student. This allows assigning staff to functional groups, e.g., only attending physicians are displayed in the attending column. Medical students can sign up for resident roles if desired. A placeholder in the resident’s drop-down list allows attendings to advise residents not to sign up for a patient. This allows attendings to treat patients without involving a resident, such as during periods of peak census, for special types of patients, or when treating patients in the “fast track” area. The names of the charge, triage and flow nurse are displayed at the top of the whiteboard. Residents and attendings have a flag next to their respective columns for annotation purposes, e.g., indicating that they have seen the patient or that a patient’s chart has been dictated.

Management of Bed and Patient Location

An ED bed board view supports staff in moving patients within the ED environment. The whiteboard’s bed column gives access to the ED bed board, which displays patient information for occupied beds and the status level for unoccupied beds. If a bed is unoccupied, the whiteboard’s empty patient name field provides access to a drop-down list that allows staff to indicate various bed status levels ( ▶ ). When a nurse completes the discharge documentation on the whiteboard indicating that a patient has physically left the ED, the “needs cleaning” status is displayed automatically. Once the room has been cleaned, environmental services staff indicate on the whiteboard that the room is available again. Some bed status levels, such as “needs cleaning” prevent the ED staff from placing a patient in a room. Displaying the elapsed time since the last status change provides information about ED room utilization and turn-around times. At times of increased ED volume the charge nurse can dynamically activate temporary hallway locations to predetermined locations on the whiteboard. On the waiting room display, the triage staff can also prioritize patients requiring a treatment bed, or indicate patients who may not require a bed to complete their treatment.

Table 2 ED Bed Board Status Levels

Chief Complaint

During the registration process an administration clerk captures the patient’s free text chief complaint, which the whiteboard displays in an upper case font. In our ED, captured free text chief complaints are occasionally inaccurate, clinically obscure, may not represent a chief complaint, and include misspellings or abbreviations. In an effort to standardize chief complaints we added an ICD-9-CM coding schema to our ED triage component. As part of the computerized triage documentation the triage nurse or the patient’s primary nurse converts the patient’s chief complaint from free text into an ICD-9-CM coded format. Coded chief complaints are displayed in lower case, allowing staff to identify uncoded chief complaints. Patients with high risk conditions, such as acute coronary syndrome, are identified during the triage process. To alert staff about patients presenting with a high risk condition selected chief complaints are displayed on a red background. Similar flags exist for other situations including patients who screen positively for domestic violence or patients who represent a security risk to the patient or the hospital staff, such as public figures, victims of violent crimes, or patients with a history of aggressive behavior towards healthcare providers.

Coding chief complaints has several advantages. Sensitive chief complaints can be recognized and replaced by abbreviations that may not be easily identified by patients and visitors inside the ED. For example, any alcohol-related chief complaint is displayed as “a&d.” Standardized chief complaints help support data abstraction and reporting mechanisms. 47–49 They also have the potential to facilitate research, support the implementation of clinical guidelines, 50 assist in quality improvement activities, and allow epidemiological studies 51 and ad-hoc syndromic surveillance based on specific chief complaints 47,52,53 The availability of ICD-9-CM codes has the additional advantage of supporting order entry because EDs are required to provide a reason for ordering specific laboratory tests and radiologic exams.

Acuity Level

The computerized triage documentation component is initiated through the acuity level column on the whiteboard. When the triage process is completed, the triage application sends the acuity level, as determined by the Emergency Severity Index, 54 to the whiteboard. In addition to assessing the severity of a patient’s condition, acuity levels can support the calculation of acuity-adjusted operational statistics. 15,54

Consultations

A consult drop-down list displays available consultation services. The drop-down list is sufficient for the large majority of patients for which a single consult is ordered and allows basic tracking.

Order Status Notification

From the whiteboard the nursing staff can launch an order tracker application which supports the management and documentation of orders entered through the computerized provider order entry system. Color-coded notifications in the order tracker column inform staff about the presence and the number of new, incomplete, and completed orders. For example a red flag indicates new orders that the nurse has not yet acknowledged.

Exam Status Notification

Color-coded alerts notify staff about the status of radiology studies or the availability of laboratory results. The ED information system is interfaced with the hospital’s computerized patient record, enabling direct access to more detailed information about laboratory results, imaging exams, and documentation of ED procedures. For example, if the whiteboard displays a laboratory notification, the physician may select the patient’s laboratory notification field and be directed to the patient’s current and previous laboratory results in the computerized patient record. Similarly, the three-level, color-coded notification of radiology exam status provides direct access to a summary of imaging exam information including the status of individual tests, initial interpretation and whether an attending radiologist has reviewed the study. ED physicians are required to acknowledge that they have reviewed information from radiology exams. This allows the system to identify new information that is available as part of updating the preliminary exam interpretations, which occurs frequently, such as when attending radiologists review resident radiologists’ interpretations and enter additional information. The goal of providing detailed radiology exam status information was to improve the timeliness of notification and the communication between radiologists and ED physicians. Due to the recent focus on monitoring quality indicators for pneumonia, 55 the system queries the radiologists’ preliminary interpretation for keywords suggestive of pneumonia. If keywords are found, the radiology column notifies clinicians about the possibility of pneumonia, prompting the clinician to review the radiology information.

Patient Disposition Process

Because different processes are involved for hospital admitted and treat-and-release patients, separate columns are implemented to notify clinicians about a patient’s planned disposition. Through the admission column physicians submit an electronic bed request to the hospital’s bed board application. The bed request includes mandatory information such as requested unit, accepting physician and service, observation or inpatient status, and the need for a monitored or isolation bed. When the bed management team assigns a bed the whiteboard displays time and type of the bed request. A three-level bed status notification informs the ED staff about the progress of the hospital bed allocation process, including proposed patient status, bed request time, and final hospital bed assignment. For treat-and-release patients, physicians activate the departure field informing the nursing staff that the clinical evaluation process is complete, and the discharge instructions and prescriptions have been finalized.

ED Disposition

After completing patient education, the nurse activates the discharge page, which collects disposition information and removes a patient from the whiteboard, indicating that the patient has physically left the ED. The discharge page includes required disposition information, such as how the patient left the ED, or alerts, such as a reminder to cancel any pending bed requests for patients who were eventually not admitted to the hospital. A registration alert informs the nurse whether the patient needs to pass by the registration desk to provide any additional information or to compensate the ED for any financial obligations.

ED Registration Information

The ED registration process has the potential to become lengthy and time-consuming. When the registration staff has completed rapid registration, the admission-discharge-transfer system updates the whiteboard indicating whether a patient’s registration is complete or not. After the medical screening exam, the staff captures any additional patient registration information in the waiting room or at the bed side. Once the staff has completed the registration process, they set the registration flag on the whiteboard. The discharging nurse is required to accompany the patient to the discharge station when a red flag is displayed indicating that the patient owes a co-payment or a yellow flag indicating that additional administrative information is needed. A green flag indicates that the registration process is complete and the patient can be discharged from the ED without delay.

Patient Referral Information

The efficient identification of and communication with the patient’s primary care physician remains a challenge for every ED. Although primary care physician information is available in the institution’s computerized patient record, the information may not be accurate at the time of the ED encounter. Our ED captures the patient’s current primary care physician information in free text on a separate data entry form including name, phone number, and a checkbox for denoting notification. A flag is displayed on the whiteboard to indicate that primary care physician information is available and whether the primary care physician has been notified.

Treatment Plan

Most ED physicians like to keep track of a patient’s workup plan, pending studies, and comments, which helps providers at shift change when patient care is turned over to new ED staff members. The patient’s free text plan field is displayed on the whiteboard. A separate provider note field captures information that clinicians prefer not to display on the whiteboard, and an additional sign-out field facilitates reporting among residents.

General Information and Operational Statistics

The whiteboard computes and displays operational statistics in real-time and keeps the ED staff informed about the occupancy rate and overall turn-around times. For the waiting room, the whiteboard displays the number of patients and their average wait times. For the clinical exam area the occupancy rate and the average ED length of stay are displayed. In addition the whiteboard displays the number and average length of stay for boarding patients, the number of expected patients, such as announced transports, and the average Emergency Severity Index acuity level. The whiteboard also displays in real-time the diversion status of specific service units, which is maintained by the institution’s aeromedical service.

Additional Whiteboard Views

The whiteboard allows the display of the entire ED, or each of the two subunits (A- and B-Pod) separately. A personalized “My Patients” view lists only patients for which the user has resumed responsibility. The whiteboard’s detailed electronic registration log has eliminated the need for maintaining a manual log book. Additional log files include information about all clinicians who cared for a patient and a room trace capturing all beds that patients occupied during the ED encounter.

Downtime Periods

The whiteboard depends on the reliable functioning of a complex information system infrastructure. To successfully manage scheduled and unscheduled ED information system failures, downtime procedures need to be available. The unavailability of whiteboard information, even for a short time period, slows ED operations, delays patient care, and may jeopardize timely decision making with the increased potential to introduce errors. When the computerized whiteboard is unavailable, its information is transferred to a traditional, dry-erase whiteboard. Depending on the type of information system failure, the downtime may result in two different whiteboard behaviors.

If the primary ED information system service becomes unavailable, all whiteboard information disappears immediately. To prevent complete loss of information, a local computer in the ED driving the main plasma display continually saves an image of the whiteboard content every five minutes. If an error prevents the whiteboard from being displayed, the computer defaults to the most recent saved whiteboard image, which can be printed out and supports the transition to the dry-erase whiteboard. In addition to storing whiteboard screenshots locally, the images are transferred to a database, which allows the review of the whiteboard view in 10 minute increments. The availability of historical whiteboard images supports the bi-monthly review of appropriateness of diversion episodes and is helpful in managing patient complaints.

Status Report

The ED whiteboard application has been in operation since September 2002 and been used during the care of >400,000 patients in the adult and pediatric ED. Staff compliance with non-mandatory whiteboard elements is high; for example, >97% of patients have a coded chief complaint or an acuity level assigned, >98% have an attending of record, and 86% have a bedside nurse assigned. The whiteboard has become the primary instrument for the ED and the hospital to manage various aspects of health care operations, both clinical and administrative. Besides its clinical and operational functionality, the whiteboard infrastructure has been used for various clinical, administrative, educational, and research purposes.

Clinical Benefits

The primary clinical benefits are associated with enhanced communication among care providers, optimized workflow, better continuity of care, and improved access to clinical and operational information through the whiteboard’s integrative role as a point of entry for ED clinicians’ information needs. Some examples may illustrate how the application can support diverse clinical tasks. The hospital implemented a daily influenza watch report based on the ED whiteboard’s coded chief complaints. During a recent influenza season, which resulted in up to 70% volume surges in the pediatric ED, hospital administration cancelled elective surgery during peak days in order to have capacity available for patients requiring hospital admission. In addition, the coded chief complaints are transmitted daily to the Nashville Metro Health department to contribute to city-wide biosurveillance. The whiteboard’s chief complaints are used to recruit patients into research studies or to evaluate a patient’s eligibility for guideline initiation. 56 The whiteboard infrastructure also supports the implementation of quality indicators, such as for pneumonia or patients presenting with chest pain. Due to the lack of baseline data prior to implementing the computerized whiteboard, we were unable to measure any direct effects of the whiteboard on throughput times or documentation error rates.

Financial Benefits

Direct financial benefits from the whiteboard application are related to improved administrative processes. The previously paper-based ED facility level charge capture was incorporated into the whiteboard’s discharge process, resulting in >99% posted charges, an increase of 2% that translated into additional annual revenue of > $1 million. In addition the time to post charges decreased from an average of three to less than one day, and one charge entry position was freed up for other responsibilities. Recently, the hospital implemented additional improvements in determining and capturing ED charges and discontinued the use of nurses to capture facility level charges at the time of discharge. An annual revenue increase of about $40,000 resulted from having an attending of record for each patient, which helped the billing office to identify responsible attending physicians when patient charts remained unsigned or dictations were missing. The whiteboard supports the completion of registration information and the collection of ED co-payments by alerting the discharging nurse that the patient is required to visit the discharge station. The indirect financial benefits likely outweigh the direct benefits, but they are challenging to estimate because the application indirectly supports numerous intertwined clinical and operational functions, such as improved clinical data quality for billing purposes. The primary benefits are likely be linked to the whiteboard’s ability to streamline processes, improve efficiency, enhance data quality, or facilitate tasks that were previously not possible. 57

Administrative Benefits

The whiteboard database and enterprise data warehouse support daily reporting and updating of the monthly scorecard, which tracks ED specific metrics such as volume, throughput, discharge levels, boarding patients, patients who left without being seen or against medical advice, hours of diversion, etc. Daily reports track ED census, length of stay measures, patients who left prior to ED discharge, and influenza watch report. For other reporting needs the ED leadership can access the enterprise data warehouse through a commercial business intelligence application (ProClarity™) allowing them to create and change queries dynamically. Examples include queries for various performance measures, such as tracking attendings’ relative value units or providing residents’ with educational feedback about their patients. The whiteboard information allows assessment of the impact of improvement initiatives, such as team triage, which added an attending physician to the triage team. ED administration adjusted the staffing models to better match daily volumes and eliminated triage during morning hours. In addition, the whiteboard information has supported administration in participating in national surveys, managing patient complaints, responding to inquiries from state agencies, or in legal matters associated with ED patient care.

Research Benefits

The whiteboard infrastructure supported various research activities related to clinical or operational studies that include an ED patient flow component, such as examining ED crowding, 38,39,58 studying the impact of ED expansion on diversion episodes, 59 developing a simulation environment to predict ED operational variables, understanding the effect of ED team triage on time to order a CT in patients presenting with abdominal complaints, tracking workload of providers, 32,60 or measuring stress levels of resident physicians.

The whiteboard has long been a centralized place for communication and coordination within the ED. 61 With its cross-sectional and patient-oriented view the whiteboard has the potential to serve as the primary portal for information needs in the ED. The computerized whiteboard’s ability to integrate, track, and compile information from various sources provides the ED with an indispensable tool to access patient-specific information, coordinate patient management, track individual patient care, and monitor overall ED operations in real time. In our ED the whiteboard has demonstrated its potential to support the redesign of workflow processes, enhance communication within and outside the ED, support the transition of care, provide the infrastructure for decision support, and share and aggregate information. After the institution’s electronic medical record, the whiteboard was the second major information system component and is believed to have paved the way for the successful implementation and acceptance of other information system components, such as computerized provider order entry.

Our experience has shown that in order for the whiteboard data to be accurate and reliable, electronic documentation and data capture must be an integral part of the ED’s regular workflow patterns and cannot require additional or redundant steps. Because the whiteboard was designed around workflow processes, data entry is performed by the most knowledgeable ED staff member with the primary responsibility for capturing a particular piece of information. Tracking operational data became a side-product of regular ED processes rather than being a primary task. For example, information about the times patients were brought back to rooms is accurate because electronically moving the patient out of the waiting room and into a specific room was a necessary step in patient management. Whiteboard functions that are disconnected from regular workflow processes or require additional steps will usually be performed inconsistently.

Automatic real-time updates have improved communication among the ED, inpatient staff, and hospital administration. The clinical and operational hospital staff that support the ED for various tasks have real-time access to the whiteboard and are able to respond faster to an ever changing ED environment. Operational statistics, length of stay alerts, bed status information, diversion status information, the number of patients awaiting inpatient beds, and consultation requests all contribute to the whiteboard’s ability to provide increased visibility of the ED’s current stage of operation. The whiteboard may also serve as a platform for an early warning system that anticipates an ED reaching full capacity. This has the potential to assist EDs with earlier mobilization of support services and inpatient resources. We believe that computerized whiteboards are a critical tool for studying and implementing proposed measures for monitoring ED capacity and overcrowding situations. 15,19,38,58

The ease of integrating whiteboard elements that are collected via other components of the ED’s or the hospital’s information system differs among various EDs because they often depend on different information technology infrastructures. An ED may elect to implement a computerized whiteboard with basic functionality and display only ED generated information. Increased functionality and data exchange with other information systems can be implemented in a stepwise approach. 57

Our experiences with the integrated computerized whiteboard are limited to a single, academic ED environment. Our objectives and general approaches may be applicable in other ED settings, but other EDs may benefit from alternative solutions due to differing operational processes, patient and provider populations, information management infrastructure, physical layout, or integration capabilities.

One of the most important steps during the implementation and incremental development phases was the creation of a large variety of reports. They stimulated discussions, identified areas of priority, helped to manage expectations, illustrated the potential, and reinforced the importance of capturing data by the most knowledgeable person. The whiteboard data now allow the ED to generate reports and compare them to national benchmarks. Reports on average wait times based on time of day, charge nurse or specific physicians on duty can easily be produced. Drill-downs help the ED to identify processes that have the potential for improvement. In addition to standardized daily or weekly reports, the database can be exploited for ad-hoc queries to answer other operational, clinical, research, or educational questions.

The computerized whiteboard has become an essential instrument for communication and coordination of care in our ED. The real-time availability of cross-sectional and patient-centric data helps to improve the efficiency of patient flow, create transparency and accountability, optimize information management, and maximize effective communication within and outside of the ED. As many EDs move to apply information technology to address operational and patient management challenges, we are convinced that the computerized ED whiteboard will become the center of most ED information systems.

This work was supported in part by grant National Library of Medicine R21 LM009002-01.

Nurse Station Communication Boards

Help your team stay on task.

Nurse station communication boards create operational efficiencies that streamline workflows for your nursing staff. Our nurse station boards allow your team to easily view schedules and room assignments. You can clearly display patient rooms, staff names, and any special notes. Since the board incorportes printed graphics there is no messy tape to apply or remove.

Board graphics can also be customized to include when rounds and medication are due, pain levels, and more.

All CareBoards patient room communication boards are built to your unique requirements. You have  15 colors  to choose from and  5 standard sizes . Custom sizes can also be built.

As with all CareBoards products, all aspects of the design can be customized to reflect your hospital brand and your own unique communication needs. Board graphics can be customized to include when rounds and medication are due, pain levels, and more.

Here’s some examples of nurse station boards we’ve produced. Get some ideas and we’ll work with you to create a design customized for your unit.

View the  Graphics Examples  page to to see a variety of designs for other hospital units and healthcare applications.

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Teaching with Tech

How well does your classroom tech support student outcomes?

Tablet computer optimized for children helps early learners go digital

Private: What is Samsung DeX for education: 5 ways to use it in the classroom

How using an e-board combined with open educational resources upgrades learning.

Interactive whiteboards are effective tools in the classroom, helping to keep students engaged with what they’re learning. Also called e-boards, smart boards and interactive displays, these devices allow for more collaborative lessons and provide instant access to a vast library of open educational resources (OERs).

Here’s how e-boards can be used in the classroom, and how educators can maximize the technology’s potential:

How to use an e-board for teaching

Interactive boards for classrooms replace old-school chalkboards and dry-erase boards with digital technology, opening up a range of additional capabilities. A Samsung Interactive Display, for example, allows educators to create highly visual presentations, access digital resources, run multimedia files and annotate directly on screen. Multiple students — as many as 20 — can work on the screen simultaneously, and remote learners can view the content from their home devices.

How to create an interactive experience for all students

Today’s digital e-board offers tremendous capabilities for the modern classroom , especially when it comes to embracing all students.

Firstly, e-boards can save and share lessons and material far better than old-school chalkboards and whiteboards. In fact, with an interactive display, classroom lessons become living documents to be revisited, refined and expanded in real time. Furthermore, the flexibility of use and array of features can help teachers design and deliver lessons to suit different student levels and learning styles. While many people are auditory learners, others thrive on the visual cues of text, images and video — and others learn best with tactile, hands-on examples.

It’s also easy. Samsung Interactive Displays use up-to-date Android OS, providing a familiar, intuitive user interface with a home screen that can be customized with frequently used apps.

Other features that help teachers enhance interaction:

• A 3-in-1 USB-C port enables screen mirroring, touch control and external device charging (max. 65W).
• HDMI Out function allows screen content to be shared easily on a larger screen in an auditorium or lecture hall.
• Dual pen function allows teachers to switch between two different writing tools instantly when they flip the double-sided nib.
• Multi-touch capabilities allow many students to write and draw on the e-board at the same time, ideal for group work.

When used to their full potential, e-boards can elevate the quality and dynamism of the lesson — and the success of all students.

Read the definitive guide on interactive displays

See how educators can create an inclusive learning environment with the right technology. Download Now

How to find open educational resources for e-boards

Combined with open resources, e-boards put a world of knowledge at your fingertips. These OERs provide a vast library of educational materials for educators, from full e-books and lecture notes to images, videos and animations. Best of all, OER materials are available to all with open licenses. That means educators and students alike can download, copy, use, modify and reshare as they wish. And with the e-boards, teachers can work with what they are already using like Kami and Nearpod but also Microsoft 365 and Google platforms. Using the inputs, they can make their laptop, desktop or Android tablet a large screen to continue to use the tools they find effective. Teachers can also access their online tools directly on the displays with the built-in browser and log directly into OneDrive or Google Drive to pull up files.

As a starting point for exploring all this material, OER Commons provides a single entry point to more than 50,000 open resources. Educators can also make use of the U.S. National Science Digital Laboratory , which has a huge OER collection across dozens of categories. Other hubs for high-quality OER materials include Open-Up Resources , which is a collection of openly licensed curricula authored by experts, and Open Washington’s Open Resource Repository , which is a curated collection of links to open textbooks, images, courses, videos and more.

In addition, teachers can tap into resources that focus on instruction with electronic boards. Sites like Topmarks provide free-to-use educational materials such as lesson plans and classroom activities, specifically tuned to e-boards and other interactive whiteboard solutions. For more ideas, check out EduBirdie’s extensive list of free interactive whiteboard resources .

Breaking down barriers, expanding opportunity

The main idea behind OERs is to reduce educational barriers — like cost, format and language — and ensure teachers have access to a wealth of materials to bolster their lesson plans and better engage their students. OERs also allow teachers to share learning materials with other teachers around the world, saving each other time on lesson planning.

All of this material is digital or digitized, which makes interactive displays the optimal medium for accessing and delivering it. This technology can directly engage students and encourage collaboration on a big screen while allowing classroom access to locally stored and online files. With this combination of smart classroom technology and OERs, educators have even more tools to bring their best learning ideas to life.

Find more free lesson planning resources for digital learning and discover how one high school’s connected campus elevates education and engagement .

Dave Haynes

Dave Haynes is a well-known veteran in the digital signage industry. He consults to some of the world’s largest brands on their digital signage strategy and technical needs, but also spends time mentoring start-ups. A former daily newspaper journalist, Haynes has for the past decade written a highly-respected blog about digital signage, Sixteen:Nine . Follow Dave on twitter @sixteennine

• Classroom Tech
• Collaborative Learning
• digital signage
• Interactive classroom
• interactive displays
• Interactive Whiteboards

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PATIENT & UNIT CAREBOARDS™

Streamline patient & care team communication, without the clinical clutter, maximize patient-family engagement for person-centered care.

It’s time to move beyond manual updates for care plans, staff assignments and rounding — which often lead to data errors and delays that leave patients wondering, “What’s next?” Person-Centered Care is a key CMS initiative that is driving the future of healthcare; West-Com’s innovative technology is already helping caregivers around the world take giant leaps toward implementing this care approach.  LEARN MORE.

Considered the Swiss Army knife of electronic whiteboards, our patented CareBoards™ seamlessly deliver critical and timely information across any clinical environment.

Bolstering patient engagement and nursing staff efficiency, these boards simplify workflows and center attention at the bedside, ensuring patients, families and care team members stay connected and well-informed.

Empower Patients & Reduce Alarm Fatigue Patient CareBoard

Patient CareBoards step in where traditional mounted boards fall short. These in-room, electronic whiteboards can display caregiver names, patient details and up-to-date care plan information sourced from multiple integration points, including Nurse Call, RTLS and EMR. With information available 24/7 at a glance, CareBoards can significantly reduce call requests for non-emergency and routine questions, freeing up time for caregivers to work with greater efficiency.

Virtual care and virtual visit technology can easily be implemented with Patient CareBoards, eliminating the need for additional screens in the patient room and making the CareBoard a multi-faceted solution that enhances the delivery of care.

• CALL ASSURANCE® LED Indicator Lights: Put patients’ minds at ease with reassuring messages that let them know their call has been received and assistance is on the way. For more information or inquiries, please email us at [email protected] .
• Customizable Dashboard: Tailor clinical data sets based on facility needs, customizable per nursing unit or patient population.
• Medication Insights: Display patient medication information as appropriate, such as the time the last dosage of medication was administered and when the next one is due, keeping the patient and family informed. 
• Focused Messaging: Boost engagement with proactive prompts or display initiative or facility-based messaging to keep patients and families connected to care priorities.

Enhance Communication & Workflow Efficiency Unit CareBoard

The Unit CareBoard acts as a “care traffic controller,” replacing traditional tracking boards tucked behind nursing stations. This electronic whiteboard presents a range of vital, configurable data — from patient assignments to room statuses — automatically updated through system integrations, including EMR, or manually within a user-friendly, browser-based application.

• Live Dashboard: Stay on top of unit census, call volumes and response times for timely and accurate patient care.
• Configurable Data: Set unit-specific data preferences, including patient and staff assignments , discharges, transfers, patient status, room status and call activity.
• Real-Time Updates: Keep information up to date through system integrations or direct inputs from staff using a web-based portal.

Optimize Care with Synchronized Systems CareBoard Integrations

Update your CareBoards effortlessly through integrations with multiple systems, including:

• Staff Directory
• Staff Scheduling
• Nutrition Care Management
• Wired/Wireless Hospital Beds

Personalize Care with Dynamic Displays CareBoard Experiential Controls

Patient CareBoards come with advanced experiential controls, enabling customization that aligns with unit or patient needs and is adaptable to a myriad of environments.

• Night Mode: Schedule screen dimming to promote sleep or rest during designated hours.
• Patient-Specific Configurations: Adjust and assign screen brightness for each patient, ensuring the ambiance is always just right.
• Demographic Adjustments: Dynamically adapt the CareBoard template to resonate with patient demographics.

Meet the Full Spectrum of West-Com Solutions

Optimize your healthcare environment and discover our integrated communication systems, designed to improve caregiver and provider retention, patient health outcomes and long-term ROI.

Modernize Your Healthcare Communications

Request a virtual or in-person demo to experience how West-Com is revolutionizing the modern healthcare environment.

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Incident Command

Incident command, fire incident command app – your rescue companion.

Our intuitive design and functionality allows for enhanced situational awareness at the command level, provides incident accountability, and gathers measurable data.

ICx is a rapidly deployable situational Awareness tool that organizes every emergency scene

Utilizing a digital command board, tactical worksheet and accountability tool ensures the ability to access more information quicker than traditional methods. Our intuitive design combines modern technology with a traditional tactical worksheet feel.

ICx Features

Clean and intuitive design.

We mention this first as we feel it is the most important feature we offer. Emulating the ease of a traditional tactical worksheet, ICx is the simplest to learn product on the market for command and control of emergency incidents. Give it a try and you will agree that it has the shortest on-boarding learning curve of all like products on the market.

Incident Log

ICx keeps track of all assignments, benchmarks, and notes that the incident commander makes. All entries include a time/date stamp and are exportable to PDF for reporting.

Using the export will make the narrative of NFIRS reports the most thorough accounting of the incident.

Incident Timers

ICx boasts several useful timers for the incident commander. The incident timer keeps track of the total operating time at the incident. Additionally, each resource is timed when they are given an assignment, or when they enter the IDLH.

Each resource assignment is also shown in a history view complete with times, allowing the IC to manage time in assignments and rehab.

Personnel Accountability Reports (PARs) or Roll Calls are a necessity for the involved IC during key times like strategy change, or following a MAYDAY. This tool allows the IC to perform a quick PAR check, and records the completeness in the incident log.

Mayday Tool

ICx provides a configurable checklist for the IC to reference during the event of a firefighter emergency, or MAYDAY. It is end-user configurable to reflect the best practices and policies of the individual department.

Once indicated on the command board, the MAYDAY automatically triggers a scene snapshot referencing the assignment/location of all personnel and resources on the fireground at the time of the MAYDAY.

CAD Compatible

ICx can be configured to work with most CAD systems. The CAD interface will automatically enter dispatch information such as scene address and responding resources. The auto-population of resources makes it quicker to begin tracking them on the digital command board.

Schedule Integration

ICx will link with our FireRoster scheduling system, as well as most other third party fire department scheduling programs. The interface populates individual personnel assigned to responding units, giving the IC a better accountability tool. With mutual aid schedule integration, the IC will have the information they need about resources from other agencies.

ICx Web (Chief’s View)

A web portal allows department members to pull up a view only version of the tactical worksheet from a remote location to see what assignments are being tracked, what benchmarks are handled, and any other information that is valuable.

Your department will benefit from using ICx

Increased Situational Awareness = Safer Scenes

Increased Command Post Organization = Safer Scenes

Outstanding Tactics and Strategy Training Tool for Fire Officers

Better Documentation

ICx powered by BATT3 is Deemed Consistent with NIMS Concepts and Principles By Evaluators.

“ICx: Incident Command x, a Windows based incident command, control and accountability program was evaluated by the Supporting Technology Evaluation Project (STEP).”

“Following evaluation, it was determined that ICx is consistent with all NIMS criteria; Hazards, Preparedness, Communications and Information Management; Resource Management; Command and Management. ICx also applies to 12 Minimum Product Requirements.”

*excerpt from report executive summary, full report available to view.

take your fireground accountability to the next level

Accountability isn’t Optional

We built this solution to save firefighters. Firefighter safety is enhanced with an organized command post providing up to the minute firefighter accountability

OLD SCHOOL FEEL, MODERN FEATURES

ICx is designed around the tactical worksheet

If you have filled out a tactical worksheet before, picking up ICx will be a snap. Drag-and-Drop is easier than writing.

See it in Action: Live one-on-one Demo

Let us show you how the ICx solution can work in your command post.  Organizing assignments and managing critical fireground accountability.

We Are So Proud of This

“Most of the Incident Management software programs I’ve seen are okay, but this one is absolutely incredible! Well done guys! I am positive that there are LODD’s that would have never happened if the IC was using this. Battalion 3 Technologies batt3.com @BATT3TECH“

CHIEF RICK LASKY

Owner Five Alarm Leadership

@chieflasky

Room Assignments for April 2023 Electronics Engineering ECE-ECT Board Exams

ECE Room Assignment April 2023

PRC releases the April 2023 Electronics Engineering Licensure Exam (ECE-LE) room assignments a few weeks before the exams.

The Electronics Engineering board exams will be conducted on April 19-20, 2023, at PRC testing centers located at NCR, Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Calapan, Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, Koronadal, Legazpi, Lucena, Pagadian, Pampanga, Rosales, Tacloban, Tuguegarao, Zamboanga, and Palawan.

The Board of Electronics Engineering is headed by its Chairman, Engr. Alnar L. Detalla and its members, Engr. Enrico Claro R. Delmoro and Engr. Herminio J. Orbe.

Room Assignments for April 2023 ECE-ECT Board Exams

Electronics Technician (ECT)

• Manila (QR)
• Cagayan de Oro

Electronics Engineering (ECE)

• Legazpi (Removal/Conditioned)

Examinees shall report before 6:00 on the said date because latecomers will not be admitted.

Other Story

• How to Pass Licensure Exam? Tips from Board Passers

What to bring on the day of exams?

Here are the things to bring during the examination proper:

• Notice of Admission
• Official Receipt
• Two (2) or more pencils (NO. 2)
• Ball pens (black ink only)
• One (1) piece long brown envelope
• One (1) piece long transparent/plastic envelope (for keeping your valuables and other allowed items)
• Calculators with the following features only-addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, trigonometric functions, hyperbolic and inverse hyperbolic functions, logarithmic (log/In) and exponential (e) functions, whole number or fractional power y of x denoted by x ʸ, and polar to rectangular to polar conversions.
• Health Forms (Pursuant to Memorandum No. 68, series of 2020)
• Negative RT-PCR Test Results, if applicable, or Certificate of Quarantine or Certificate or copy of the Complete Vaccination Card for fully vaccinated examinees are to the submitted to the proctor on the examination day.

What to wear on examination day?

Here are the specified dress codes from PRC:

• For male examinees, a white polo shirt with a collar (without any seal, logo, or mark); decent pants or slacks
• For female examinees, a white blouse or shirt with a collar (without any seal, logo, or mark); decent pants or slacks

Allowed and not allowed

• Books, notes, review materials, and other printed materials containing coded information or formulas are not allowed.
• CASIO FX991ES and CASIO FX-991ES plus are not allowed pursuant to Memorandum Circular No. 2018-01
• Apple, Samsung, and other smart watches, cellular phones, ear plugs, transmitters, portable computers, Bluetooth, and other electronic devices which may be used for communication purposes are prohibited.
• Bags of any kind are not allowed.

Board exams during the COVID-19 pandemic

The following precautionary health and safety guidelines shall be observed at all times during the conduct of the PRC licensure exams:

• Wearing of face mask and face shield. Examinees are also required to bring alcohol-based sanitizers.
• Examination personnel shall be provided with a face mask, face shield, and latex gloves.
• Observe physical distancing by maintaining a 1-meter distance from one another.
• Body temperature will be checked using a thermal scanner prior to entry at the examination premises. Those with fevers, colds, or coughs are not allowed to take the exams. Their payment will not be forfeited and can be used in the next licensure exam.
• Examinees are advised to bring their food as they will not be allowed to exit the examination room during break time and lunch time.
• Examinees shall sanitize before entering the examination room, after using the rest room, and before the distribution of test questionnaires.

PRC added that they would not be responsible for any lost personal belongings.

2023 Electronics Engineering Licensure Exam Schedule

Shown below is the schedule of the 2023 ECE licensure exams:

• Program for ECE-ECT board exams for April 2023 from PRC

For those who want to clarify something, PRC advised to email them through the Licensure Exam Division at the below contacts:

• [email protected]

To receive regular updates about April 2023 Electronics Engineering licensure exam and other related announcements, we advise our visitors to bookmark this page, visit PRC’s official website, follow us on our social media pages via  Facebook  and  Twitter , or join the member’s discussions at our  Facebook Group .

If you have comments/reactions about this article, feel free to share them in the comment section below.

Kailan po ipopost yung ibang room assignment?

Sana po mapost na room assignment ng NCR.

sana po mapost na room assignment

Kailan po mapopost ang room assignment sa NCR. Thanks

Hello po, when po ipo post yung sa NCR? Thanks po

Hello po, sana maipost na po ang room assignment sa NCR, thank you.

Kelan po mag post ng room assignment for NCR?

Sa Cebu room assignment po sana

Sana po maipost na ang room assignments for ECE and ECT takers.

kailan po yung sa pampanga room asgn.?

Sana po ma-post na po room assignment sa NCR

NCR po magtatake pero from Bulacan pa po kami. Sana mapost na agad yung room assignments kasi di po kami pamilyar sa mga lugat sa NCR need pa muna namin puntahan before boards.

same case with my group po. taga-province pa na sa ncr magti-take. wala pa po kaming bahay na maiistayan dahil hindi pa namin alam kung saan na po ba ang location at hindi rin namin alam ang palibot-libot doon.

Sa girls po, ask ko lang na di ba allowed ang decent skirt sa iba ang religion? Kasi pants lang at slacks nakalagay

may pinost po si prc na parang main guidelines nung exam kasama yung schedule, tapos may nakalagay dun na decent skirt

kaya sa tingin ko po, pwede naman

Room assignments po Baguio?

Room assigmeñt po pampanga

Congrats Engr. Quadruplets!!!

Congratulations in advanced engr.jt!! <3

ay may results na pala congrats, self! emmy

Wala pa po kaming place na papagstayan sana mapost na po :(

Dumadagdag pa po kayo sa anxiety at stress ng board exam takers. Pakirelease na po yung room assignments pls

sana mapost po agad ung sa ncr. para makpg book na hotel na malapit sa venue

Sana po mapost na sa NCR. thank you

Sana mapost na po ang room assignment sa NCR, ilang days na lang po kasi. Thank you.

Goodluck future engineers

Sana po mapost na yung sa NCR…kawawa naman yung mga manggagaling pang probinsya

2 days nalang before the exam, yet wala pa rin NCR room assignment? What’s causing the delay. Release it asap, so students can prepare.

Sana mapost na po sa NCR kasi uuwi pa po ako ng Pinas

maipopost na po kaya ang room assignment today?

Maipopost na po ba ang NCR Room Assignments today? Thank you po.

Sana maipost na yung room assignment sa NCR

sobrang delay naman po :(

Good day po, wala parin po kayang school assignment for NCR? Thank you po

I hope the remaining room assignments are released by today so exam takers could visit the venue prior the schedule of exam. Thanks.

For cebu please.

Bakit po delay yung pagrelease ng room assignments? ????

Kaya today?

Sana po wag umabot mayang Gabi at bukas. Para may chance ma visit at maestimate ang time of travel (Pampanga). Thanks prc

2 days nalang before the exam, yet wala pa rin Cebu room assignment? What’s causing the delay. Release it asap, so students can prepare.

1 day nalang before the exam, yet wala pa rin NCR room assignment? What’s causing the delay. Release it asap, so students can prepare.

1 day nalang before the exam, yet wala pa rin Cebu room assignment? What’s causing the delay. Release it asap, so students can prepare.

Nasa website po ng prc yung room assignment. Kaka-check ko lang po kahapon

How about Cebu Palawan and Pagadian?

CEBU ROOM ASSIGNMENTS PLEASE. Bukas na po yung exam, bat wala pa???

Bukas na po ang board exams yet wla pa po ang sa Cebu room assignments… pls release na po… ???? Nakakastress na po dahil wla pa yung room assignments…

Bukas na yung board exams pero wala pa rin room assignments yung Cebu. Dagdag stress sa examinees.

CEBU ROOM ASSIGNMENTS PLEASE. BABYAHE PA YUNG IBA FROM PROVINCE. Bakit sobrang delay????? Bukas na po yung exam.

Hi, check nyo po sa prc website mismo. Meron po dun, nagcheck ako kahapon.

Cebu room assignment please.

Grabe wala pa rin. ????

Bat wala pa rin for Cebu?

MANIFESTING ENGINEER NA AKO THIS APRIL 2023!

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Job Control Whiteboards

Dry erase project tracking boards for job scheduling, tracking status, and project management, project management whiteboards.

Properly communicate the status, tasks, and priorities of your projects with our selection of job control whiteboards. Easily visualize key details about your project and ensure your team is setup for success.

Made for Your Projects

Our job control whiteboards are fully customizable to accommodate your unique needs and projects. If our designs don’t meet your specifications, send us a sketch of your whiteboard design and we’ll create a custom whiteboard for your business needs.

Click on a picture for Job Control Whiteboard descriptions, sizes, prices

Coordinate jobs and services on weekly lift-out panels

Coordinate monthly tasks with necessary paperwork

Track production steps and job flow with colored magnets

Coordinate up to 40 machines/departments

Track project status and avoid potential conflicts

Quickly display visual updates with red/green sliding indicators

Operating Room LineUp ™ Magnetic Dry-Erase Whiteboard

Patient, procedure, and staff overview. 4 sizes.

Post patient, procedure and assigned staff for each case. An open board area is included for remarks, counts, equipment or any other relevant issues that may come up. Replace any printed headings with your own custom wording at no extra charge, just click the item number and follow the "modify board" instructions on the item page. Your board will print and ship within a few days, just like the standard versions.

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• Published: 26 April 2024

Recyclable vitrimer-based printed circuit boards for sustainable electronics

• Zhihan Zhang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7394-5409 1 ,
• Agni K. Biswal   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1631-1052 2 ,
• Ankush Nandi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5031-5874 2 ,
• Kali Frost 3 ,
• Jake A. Smith   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0412-1312 1 , 3 ,
• Bichlien H. Nguyen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5870-4914 1 , 3 ,
• Shwetak Patel 1 , 4 ,
• Aniruddh Vashisth   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4740-1296 2 &
• Vikram Iyer   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3025-7953 1  

Nature Sustainability ( 2024 ) Cite this article

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• Electrical and electronic engineering
• Mechanical engineering
• Sustainability

Printed circuit boards (PCBs) are ubiquitous in electronics and make up a substantial fraction of environmentally hazardous electronic waste when devices reach end-of-life. Their recycling is challenging due to their use of irreversibly cured thermoset epoxies in manufacturing. Here, to tackle this challenge, we present a PCB formulation using transesterification vitrimers (vPCBs) and an end-to-end fabrication process compatible with standard manufacturing ecosystems. Our cradle-to-cradle life-cycle assessment shows substantial environmental impact reduction of the vPCBs over conventional PCBs in 11 categories. We successfully manufactured functional prototypes of Internet of Things devices transmitting 2.4 GHz radio signals on vPCBs with electrical and mechanical properties meeting industry standards. Fractures and holes in vPCBs are repairable while retaining comparable performance over multiple repair cycles. We further demonstrate a non-destructive recycling process based on polymer swelling with small-molecule solvents. Unlike traditional solvolysis recycling, this swelling process does not degrade the materials. Through dynamic mechanical analysis, we find negligible catalyst loss, minimal changes in storage modulus and equivalent polymer backbone composition across multiple recycling cycles. This recycling process achieves 98% polymer recovery, 100% fibre recovery and 91% solvent recovery to create new vPCBs without performance degradation. Overall, this work paves the way for sustainability transitions in the electronics industry.

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All data needed to evaluate the conclusions of this study are available in the paper or in the Extended Data and Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Cheng for discussion, Z. Englhardt for help with Bluetooth coding, B. Kuykendall for the use of mechanical testers, C. Li for feedback on the figures, K. Liao and M. Parker for help with flammability testing, and H. Wang for help with composite fabrication. We also thank D. Baker, F. Newman and C. Toskey for help with sputter coating and copper plating. This research was supported by the Microsoft Climate Research Initiative, an Amazon Research Award and the Google Research Scholar Program. Z. Zhang was supported by the University of Washington CEI Fellowship.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

Zhihan Zhang, Jake A. Smith, Bichlien H. Nguyen, Shwetak Patel & Vikram Iyer

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

Agni K. Biswal, Ankush Nandi & Aniruddh Vashisth

Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

Kali Frost, Jake A. Smith & Bichlien H. Nguyen

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

Shwetak Patel

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Contributions

Z.Z., B.H.N., A.V. and V.I. conceptualized, organized and structured the work. Z.Z., A.K.B. and A.N. fabricated GFRV composites. Z.Z. manufactured vitrimer-based PCB and conducted characterizations. Z.Z. designed the hardware system, experiments and evaluations. Z.Z., J.A.S. and B.H.N. designed the repair experiments and evaluations. Z.Z., A.K.B., J.A.S., B.H.N. and A.V. designed the recycling experiments and evaluations. Z.Z. and A.K.B. conducted material characterizations. K.F. conducted the life-cycle assessment analysis. Z.Z. and V.I. wrote the manuscript. S.P., A.V. and V.I. jointly supervised the work. All authors contributed to the study concept and experimental methods, discussed the results and edited the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Aniruddh Vashisth or Vikram Iyer .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

K.F., J.A.S. and B.H.N. are employees of Microsoft Corporation. S.P. is an employee of Google LLC. Z.Z., A.K.B., A.N., A.V. and V.I. declare no competing interests.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Rasoul Nekouei, Bozhi Tian, Xianlai Zeng and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended data fig. 1 dynamic mechanical analysis of pristine and recycled vitrimer..

a, b, c , Normalized stress relaxation curves of pristine vitrimer ( a ), vitrimer after one recycling cycle ( b ), and vitrimer after two recycling cycles ( c ) at temperatures ranging from 140 °C to 240 °C. In all cases increasing temperature results in faster stress relaxation. d, e, f , Characterized storage modulus, loss modulus, and tan delta of pristine vitrimer ( d ), vitrimer after one recycling cycle ( e ), and vitrimer after two recycling cycles ( f ).

Extended Data Fig. 2 Peel strength for copper-clad laminates with a layer of partially cured vitrimer.

a, b , Curves of the peeling force per width of copper-clad versus displacement for laminates with a layer of partially cured vitrimer after thermal stress ( a ), and at 125 °C ( b ) compared to the PCB standard of FR-4.

Source data

Extended data fig. 3 joint strength of repaired via holes in vpcb..

a , Photograph showing the joint strength testing setup. Specimen is centered on a metal hollow cylinder support with a support span of 16 mm. b , Characterized shear stress of repaired via holes in GFRV compared to the repaired holes in FR-4 using super glue. c , Photograph of FR-4 after shear punch, showing cyanoacrylate glue bond broke. d , Photograph of GFRV after shear punch, showing the repaired via hole was deformed into a funnel-shape under the force of punch but remained intact, indicating a stronger interface at the hole boundary.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Solvents test for vPCB recycling.

GFRV samples were cut into rectangular shapes and immersed in various solutions (Acetone, CHCl 3 , DMF, THF); the top, middle and bottom photos were taken immediately after immersing, after 48 h, and after 96 h, respectively.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Characterized storage modulus, tan delta, retention of storage modulus, and vitrimer transition temperature of recycled vitrimer.

a , Characterized storage modulus temperature sweep results of vitrimer after one and two recycling cycles compared to pristine. The storage modulus shows a slight decrease after recycling. b , Tan delta temperature sweep results of vitrimer after one and two recycling cycles compared to pristine, tan delta broadens and the left shift of peaks is negligible after recycling. c , Retention of storage modulus of vitrimer after one and two recycling cycles compared to pristine, data is presented as mean (SD) of vitrimer specimen in 4 parallel experiments ( N  = 4). d , Tv comparison of pristine vitrimer, vitrimer after one and two recycling cycles, indicating the shift of Tv is negligible after recycling. The Arrhenius plot is derived with a linear fit to the low-temperature region (140 °C to 180 °C), and its intersection with where the stress-relaxation constant is 10^6 indicates the Tv.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Characterized electrical and mechanical properties of reformed vPCB.

a , b, c , Characterized dielectric constant ( a ), flexural strength ( b ), volume resistivity ( c ), and loss tangent ( d ) of reformed GFRV compared to virgin composite, data is presented as mean (SD) of 3 vPCB specimens in 1 ( a, d ) and 1000 ( c ) measurements ( N  = 3, 1000, and 3 for dielectric constant, resistivity, and loss tangent, respectively).

Extended Data Fig. 7 Environmental impact of vPCB freight.

Comparison of the environmental impact of vPCB freight versus conventional FR-4 prepreg freight across 11 different categories.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Breakdown of global warming potential for conventional FR-4 PCB.

Global warming potential impact breakdown of conventional FR-4 PCB, showing that raw materials account for 48.5% of the total impact.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information.

Supplementary Discussions, Figs. 1–11, Table 1 and References.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary video 1.

Vitrimer swelling in THF. Time-lapse video showing the swelling process of the vitrimer matrix in THF at room temperature.

Supplementary Video 2

Flammability test for GFRV composite. Video showing a GFRV composite being ignited, burning and extinguished.

Source Data Fig. 2

Statistical source data.

Source Data Fig. 3

Source data fig. 4, source data fig. 5, source data fig. 6, source data extended data fig. 2, source data extended data fig. 5, source data extended data fig. 6, source data extended data fig. 7, source data extended data fig. 8, rights and permissions.

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Zhang, Z., Biswal, A.K., Nandi, A. et al. Recyclable vitrimer-based printed circuit boards for sustainable electronics. Nat Sustain (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01333-7

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Received : 01 September 2023

Accepted : 26 March 2024

Published : 26 April 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01333-7

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