Communication and information exchange between primary healthcare employees and volunteers – Challenges, needs and possibilities for technology support

In light of the challenges posed by an ageing population and tighter public budgets, governments worldwide are seeking innovative ways of improving health service delivery. Volunteers can contribute to such improvement, but this requires effective coordination and communication between volunteers and healthcare employees. In this case study, conducted in two Norwegian municipalities during September-October 2017, the aim was to understand how collaboration and coordination is carried out between several stakeholders: volunteers, volunteer family members of healthcare service users and healthcare employees. Our results show that daily cooperation was largely unsystematic, and stakeholders employed various informal communication procedures. Recruitment of volunteers was based on word of mouth and was coordinated by telephone and email. All processes were paper based, including contracting and confidential agreements. This unsystematic approach resulted in uncoordinated activities characterised by time-consuming processes, with no quality assurance. We concluded that stakeholders would benefit from a technology solution that supports more systematic processes of recruitment, management and monitoring. This article outlines the challenges and needs for information exchange and communication between stakeholders. Furthermore, it describes possible functionality in a digital system that can address these needs, and hence improve coordination, quality of services and resource use.