My colleagues and I recently had an article published in the journal Information Technology & People. The article draws on interviews with women who had Type 1 diabetes and were pregnant, planning for pregnancy, or had recently had a baby at the time of the interview. The research examined the role new technologies - particularly IT-enabled insulin pumps, or "smartpumps" - played in assisting the women to manage their diabetes during (or before/after) pregnancy. Using an Activity Theory lens, we identified the contradictions that arose when new technologies were introduced into this complex health management activity. The research found that health management in this setting involved negotiations and contradictions across boundaries of interacting activities. The women we interviewed played an active and pivotal role in managing their health and using new IT tools in particular ways to support their health management. Using new technologies created both opportunities and challenges. IT-enabled healthcare devices and other information systems opened up new treatment possibilities, but also generated new contradictions between interacting activity systems. Given the central and proactive role that our interviewees played in choosing and appropriating new tools to manage their health, we argue that healthcare providers need to accommodate a bottom-up approach to the adoption and use of new technologies. This is particularly important in settings where empowered patients play an active role in managing their health. Here are the full publication details:
Waycott, J., Scheepers, R., Davis, H., Howard, S., & Sonenberg, L. (2014). The individual in multiple interacting activity systems: IT-supported diabetes management. Information, Technology & People, 27(4), 463-481.
0 Comments
On Wednesday 15th October I gave a presentation at an Australian Association of Gerontology forum on the topic of "Technology to Prevent Social Isolation".
The talk presented findings and reflections from the project "Growing Older and Staying Connected: Touch-screen Technologies for Ameliorating Older People's Experience of Social Isolation". Many factors associated with ageing, such as deteriorating health and limited mobility, make it difficult for older people to socialise and engage in local community activities. New communication technologies, which are becoming more accessible and easier to use, offer new opportunities for supporting older adults who are socially isolated. In the project, small groups of older adults used a new iPad application to create and share photographs and messages. During this presentation, I showed examples of the sorts of creativity and self-expression that emerged during the photo-sharing activity. The talk also provided reflections on the challenges we encountered when introducing a technology and creating a new social network with people aged in their 80s and 90s, most of whom lived alone. This week I am giving a presentation about a small project that was funded by the University of Melbourne's Office for Research Ethics and Integrity. The project investigated the ethical issues that aged care professionals encounter when designing, implementing, and evaluating social programs for older people. We found that ethical issues are rarely reported in the literature on social isolation interventions, but aged care professionals do encounter ethical concerns, such as how to ensure programs are designed and run in a way that is respectful of participants’ individuality. The findings suggest that there is a need to further investigate these issues in order to inform future ethical designs of interventions and social technologies for isolated older people. The work will be presented at "Beyond Compliance: Ethics and Integrity Research Showcase" on Tuesday 30th September. Update:
A report about the showcase event is available on the OREI blog. |
Archives
July 2017
Categories
All
|
Dr Jenny Waycott, Associate Professor, School of Computing & Information Systems, The University of Melbourne
Contact: jwaycott @ unimelb.edu.au Twitter: @jlwaycott |