Development and Preliminary Evaluation of an Electronic Intelligent Nursing Whiteboard in Inpatient Wards

Traditional nursing handover methods may be limited by manual data entry, delayed information updates, and fragmented communication, creating a need for more efficient and standardized handover tools. This 2-phase development and preliminary evaluation study aimed to develop an electronic intelligent nursing whiteboard and preliminarily evaluate its clinical application. In phase I, the whiteboard content framework was established using a 2-round Delphi method involving 71 experts. The consensus framework was translated into 4 primary modules that integrated data from hospital information systems for structured display, intelligent filtering, and alerts. In phase II, the phase I-derived system was implemented in surgical wards and preliminarily evaluated using a quasi-experimental, nonequivalent historical control group design. The control (preimplementation) and intervention (postimplementation) groups had 232 nurses each. The electronic whiteboard was associated with significantly higher total and dimensional scores on the Nursing Handover Evaluation Scale compared with the traditional method (P < .001). The system also demonstrated good usability, with a mean System Usability Scale score of 83.50, although the learnability subscore was relatively lower at 65.70. These findings suggest that the Delphi-informed electronic intelligent nursing whiteboard was feasible and acceptable in this setting and may improve nurse-reported handover quality. Future refinement should focus on improving learnability through interface optimization and structured training.