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Article
Publication date: 8 August 2008

Brit Ross Winthereik

The paper seeks to examine how an online maternity record involving pregnant women worked as a means to create shared maternity care.

680

Abstract

Purpose

The paper seeks to examine how an online maternity record involving pregnant women worked as a means to create shared maternity care.

Design/methodology/approach

Ethnographic techniques have been used. The paper adopts a theoretical/methodological framework based on science and technology studies.

Findings

The paper shows how a version of “the responsible patient” emerges from the project which is different from the version envisioned by the project organisation. The emerging one is concerned with the boundary between primary and secondary sector care, and not with the boundary between home and clinic, which the project identifies as problematic and seeks to transgress.

Research limitations/implications

The pilot project, which is used as a case, is terminated prematurely. However, this does not affect the fact that more attention should be paid to the specific redistribution of responsibilities entailed in shared care projects. Rather than seeking to connect all actors in an unbounded space, shared care might instead suggest a space for patients and professionals to experiment with new roles and responsibilities.

Practical implications

When designing coordination tools for health care, IT designers and project managers should attend to the specific ways in which boundaries are inevitably enacted and to the ways in which care is already shared. This will provide them with opportunities to use the potentials of new identities and concerns that emerge from changing the organisation of healthcare in relation to IT design.

Originality/value

The paper shows that “unshared” care does not exist; care is always shared among human and nonhuman actors. It also points to the value of studying how boundaries are enacted in projects that seek to create continuity across boundaries.

Details

Journal of Health Organization and Management, vol. 22 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1477-7266

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 June 2008

Brit Ross Winthereik, Nis Johannsen and Dixi Louise Strand

Through an analysis of a demonstration video presenting a new national e‐health portal, this paper aims to explore the assumptions and limitations of the concept of “script” and…

1208

Abstract

Purpose

Through an analysis of a demonstration video presenting a new national e‐health portal, this paper aims to explore the assumptions and limitations of the concept of “script” and suggests a different approach to analysing the moral order of technology design.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper reviews the work of authors who have written about scripts and scripting, and thereafter analyses a demonstration video with a particular user script. Based on the analysis of the video coupled with material from interviews, observation and analysis of other representations, the paper examines the transformative potential of the portal presentation for reconfiguring relationships between citizens, health care systems, and information and communication technology (ICT). The analysis is guided by Haraway's notion of diffraction.

Findings

The analysis demonstrates the particular way in which the user is scripted in an e‐health demo, as a manager of his own health and, consequently, as a good citizen. This is a kind of script that does not directly groom its user, as implied in the notion of script, but rather figures up a probable future user in order to create and manage strategic partnerships that may secure the future of the technology and organisation behind it.

Research limitations/implications

The paper extends the script metaphor beyond a limited designer‐technology‐user configuration and argues that scripts in the paraphernalia of technologies also can and should be “de‐scribed” in understanding the making of the technology and the distributed networks of actors involved.

Originality/value

The paper is a contribution to the discussion on inscriptions in technology and the politics of technology design. Its originality lies in the combined use of notions of script and making things public. Empirically it contributes to the discussion of transformed patient identities following in the wake of implementation and use of ICT in the health care sector.

Details

Information Technology & People, vol. 21 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0959-3845

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 September 2002

Casper Bruun Jensen and Brit Ross Winthereik

In this paper, we discuss the production of visions for IT in Danish health care. Visions are not propagated “from above” but are produced through translation processes, in which…

462

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the production of visions for IT in Danish health care. Visions are not propagated “from above” but are produced through translation processes, in which contents change as they are inscribed in ministerial reports, leaflets or recommendations. This is illustrated by two cases: the electronic patient record at Hvidovre Hospital (HVEPS) and the Digital Doctor Project (DDP). Following STS‐studies we propose to analyse such reports as material agents with distinctive capacities and features. Prominent among those is the ability of such reports to carry “contradictory” messages. We analyse this capacity as a strength as it enables reports to bind together various people in various contexts, rather than as a weakness. We propose the concept of political moment as a tool that can capture the material heterogeneity and the unexpectedness of translations. The concept of moralising moment is introduced to identify accounts in which such processes are glossed or covered.

Details

Information Technology & People, vol. 15 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0959-3845

Keywords

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