9th European Conference on
Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

Workshop 1. Monday 19 September
Reconfiguring Healthcare: Issues in Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Healthcare Environments

Ellen Balka, Simon Fraser University and Vancouver Coastal Health
Ina Wagner, Technical University of Vienna

Background

Computers are appearing everywhere in healthcare-in doctor's offices, hospitals, x-ray facilities, at emergency room triage counters, in hospital and community pharmacies, in doctor's offices. Computers are the means through which data are organized and analyzed to support evidence based medicine; they are the means through which care providers in multiple locations can share and add to medical records. How are they being used, and what and whose goals are they serving?

In recent years, the numbers of researchers engaged in projects concerned with the design and introduction of computer systems into varied health care settings has increased. In November, we held a workshop at the CSCW conference in Chicago that sought to bring together researchers engaged in information technology projects in varied health care settings (including hospitals, community clinics, home care settings, laboratories and radiology facilities) to exchange information about projects, explore theoretical frameworks that are guiding current inquiries, and to establish opportunities to create synergies between projects. In this follow up workshop, we are now seeking to extend discussion that began in Chicago.

The goals of this workshop are to stimulate discussion about how computerization of the health sector is interacting with cooperative work, and to encourage participants to reflect on the theme of configurability, and the ways that computer systems in health care are or are not configurable, and how those systems are reconfiguring work. In this workshop we will pursue that goal through discussion of the following issues:

• Healthcare systems are complex. How are they similar to and different from other forms of complex work?
• How healthcare is organized varies from country to country and setting to setting (e.g., hospitals vs. community clinics) - it is embedded in a variety of arrangements. How do these varied arrangements influence how cooperative work is carried out?
• What theoretical frameworks are well suited to the study of information technology in healthcare?
• How to align local practices of healthcare with the universal demands of interoperability?
• How to cope with the ethical dimension of the inescapable ‘permanent tension’ between the need for global standards and the enduring or emerging local concerns?
• How to design for configurability – of IT systems, workspaces, formats, terminologies, components/devices, etc.?
• How to support users in amending/adapting systems and equipment once they have been installed or extend them to deal with specific features of particular tasks, practices and situations?

Participants are asked to submit a 4-5 page working paper including a short biography, to workshops chairs (ellenb@sfu.ca, iwagner@pop.tuwien.ac.at), no later than June 20.

Statements should describes a current project related to information technology and healthcare, and addresses some of the themes outlined above.

Workshop participants will be asked to read all contributions in advance of the workshop, and to come prepared to discuss themes outlined here and addressed in participant contributions.

Workshop Leaders

Ellen Balka is the principle investigator of ACTION for Health, a $3 million project that explores the role of technology in the production, consumption and use of health information in varied health care contexts. She is a professor n the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, and a senior research scientist at Vancouver Coastal Health Authority’s Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation. Her field work has included investigations of hospital admitting systems, automated drug dispensing machines, wireless paging systems, and electronic patient records in hospitals and doctors offices.

Ina Wagner has been conducting research about computer systems in healthcare since the early 1990s. Her previous work in this area has included studies of an early computer system developed to support nursing work, as well as a study of a digital radiology system. She is a co-investigator in the ACTION for Health Project, where in addition to carrying out work about electronic patient records, she directs the ACTION for Health work concerned with ethical issues related to computerization of the health sector.

Participants

This workshop is intended for researchers and practitioners interested in how computer systems in the health sector are interacting with cooperative work. In order to encourage discussion, a maximum of 15 participants will be included.