I'm always intrigued when I see distributed workers find new ways to organize, collaborate and produce value.  A group of doctors in the Washington, D.C. area, for example, took Intranets.com’s hosted portal service and turned it into an ad-hoc conference system and database.

Dr. Andrew Barbash runs the Stroke Care Management Program at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Md., a group of about 16 clinicians specializing in stroke victims. The group includes primary care physicians, radiologists and consulting physicians working for universities. Dr. Barbash looked specifically for a way to coordinate a group across multiple offices and hospitals while making sure he didn't have to include any hospital or university IT departments.

"All healthcare groups are virtual organizations, and we have to solve the same type of problems the larger organizations have," Dr. Barbash says. "At the end of the day, you have one patient and one set of problems."

How does one coordinate users across multiple schools and hospitals? Dr. Barbash discovered Intranets.com and realized that although they sell the product to companies, it worked great as a virtual company coordination tool. The two most important components for Barbash are Web conferencing with shared computer screen displays and the database capabilities.

"I can pull up secure patient records from my hospital, and show only those records to a radiologist across town at a university," Dr. Barbash says. "The guest radiologist can manipulate the information directly, but I control access into the hospital system and patient records, following security rules." This feature allows the radiologist to focus on what he or she wants to see, not just what Barbash has on the screen at the time. Using the voice feature through Intranets.com, the doctors can discuss what they are viewing onscreen.

Dr. Barbash latched onto this about 18 months ago, and this feature became the hub of all collaborative consulting for the group. "We can even record the entire conversation and demo," he says. Maybe one day insurance companies will reimburse for virtual meetings, but they don’t today as technology outraces bureaucratic rules. When they do, the recording feature should come in handy.

Medical billing, always a problem for individual doctors, also improves through Intranets.com. "I keep all records online, and I allow a medical billing service access to just the folders necessary for the current patient," Dr. Barbash says. "It's quicker and easier for me, and when they pull the records down from the site there's less chance of transcription error." The medical billing services love the easy access to records, and downloading files sure beats schlepping paper records across town.