Getting the Whole Picture?

Abstract

GETTING THE WHOLE PICTURE?New information and communication technologies in healthcare work and organization Considerable effort has been invested in telemedicine and e-health, but relatively few applications have endured beyond the research and development phase. Research within different academic disciplines points to the significance of established working and organizational relations within healthcare in shaping the outcome of particular projects, whether successful or otherwise. Even so, the findings appear as disparate and discrete observations which make it difficult for those involved in the field to get an overview of ICT in healthcare work and organization or to interpret the implications of the studies. The aim of our article is to demonstrate the importance and value of situating ICT initiatives within a sociological framework of healthcare work and organization and to show how this enables us to carry out systematic analysis across a range of ICT initiatives in different clinical settings.

Clinicians’ Selection Criteria for Video Visits in Outpatient Care: Qualitative Study (Preprint)

“…A video visit, thereby, extends the clinical space and brings a new context to a consultation (cf. [1]). In our case, non-medical settings were added to the clinical environment (cf.…”

“…These changes threaten and disrupt spatial, professional and organisational orders in the work and organisation (cf. [1]). …”

“…Still, they needed time to become familiar with the concept and the changes that are introduced, e.g., new tasks and division of labour (cf. [1]). Some of the barriers can be avoided in the design of the technical solution used; it is not just to change the physical meeting room into a virtual meeting room, there are other services and functionalities in conjunction to the meeting room that need to be accounted for, e.g., a waiting room.…”

“…When conducting video visits, technology is added to the meeting. Also, implementing telemedicine requires that "work is organised in new ways, introducing new tasks and new divisions of labour" [1]. Our study explored a new working task that evolved when clinicians introduced video visits in outpatient care at a hospital in Sweden; selecting patients for video visits.…”

“…It raises issues and leads to changes regarding identity, roles and authority that makes the power relationship between the participants shift and change; as well as their expectations on each other ( [1][8] [9][10]). "Telecare technologies constitute a spatial separation between healthcare professionals and patients in which physical contacts are replaced by virtual encounters" [11].…”