A graphical user interface, referred to herein as a virtual whiteboard, that provides both: (1) an automatically prioritized display of information related to a particular patient that is tailored to the current user of the system, and (2) a “scratch pad” area in which multiple users of the system may input free-form text and other data for sharing with other users of the system. When each user of the system accesses the virtual whiteboard, the system: (1) automatically prioritizes the patient information based on characteristics of the user and displays the automatically prioritized patient information to that user, and (2) displays the contents of the scratch pad to the user. As a result, the whiteboard displays both information that is tailored to the current user and information that is common to all users (i.e., not tailored to any particular user).