Objective As patient care becomes more collaborative in nature there is a need for information technology that supports interdisciplinary practices of care. This research developed and performed usability testing of a stand alone computer based information tool to support the interdisciplinary practice of palliative severe pain management (SPM).

Design A grounded theory-participatory design (GT-PD) approach was used with three distinct palliative data sources to obtain and understand user requirements for SPM practice and how a computer based information tool could be designed to support those requirements.

Results The GT-PD concepts and categories provided a rich perspective of palliative SPM and the process and information support required for different SPM tasks. A conceptual framework consisting of an ontology and set of three problem solving methods was developed to reconcile the requirements of different interdisciplinary team members. The conceptual framework was then implemented as a prototype computer based information tool that has different modes of use to support both day to day case management and education of palliative SPM. Usability testing of the computer tool was performed and the tool tested favorably in a laboratory setting.

Conclusions An interdisciplinary computer based information tool can be developed to support the different work practices and information needs of interdisciplinary team members but explicit requirements must be sought from all prospective users of such a tool. Qualitative methods such as the hybrid GT-PD approach used in this research are particularly helpful for articulating computer tool design requirements.