EUSSET Digital Library
Not a member yet
2691 research outputs found
Sort by
The Impact of Electronic Health Records on Meaningful Work in Healthcare: A Literature Review
No full textElectronic Health Records (EHRs) are transforming how healthcare professionals work by enhancing and constraing their work. These raises questions about how EHRs changes their experience of meaningful work. This literature review utilizes 38 empirical studies to explore how EHRs influence four dimensions of meaningful work: mastery, purpose, connection, and autonomy. EHRs often strain usability, autonomy, and patient relationships due to tensions between technology, institutional goals, and care practices. The findings unveil ongoing tensions between the values embedded in digital infrastructures and the ideals of humanistic care. Clinicians often adapt through workarounds to maintain purpose and agency within rigid systems. The review advocates for participatory and value-sensitive design approaches focusing on professional identity, relational care, and ethical practice. EHRs risk undermining the work that the system aims to support
Bridging coordination practices and digital infrastructure in French Community Health Centers – A Renewal of Primary Care Information Systems
No full textThis work investigates how labeled information systems support—or fail to support—coordination and documentation in French community health centers (“Centres de Santé”, CDS), where healthcare professionals are salaried rather than paid per service. These centers offer a unique configuration for studying coordination practices, as they allow staff to devote more time to these non-remunerated but essential collective tasks. Based on an ongoing ethnographic study, we report preliminary findings from interviews and observations conducted in one CDS. Our results highlight the central role of non-medical staff in managing information flows, the predominance of diverse artefacts (e.g., paper notes, verbal exchanges) to cope with the limitations of the current labelled information system in supporting actual workflows. We also explore how misalignments between software editors and organizational needs could affect care practices. These initial insights will inform the co-design of an alternative infrastructure and guide future engagement with software vendors
“All the data you need” – striving for “overview” in cross-sectoral chronic disease management
No full textChronic-care-management relies on the availability of clinical data on a patient’s current health status, as well as data about treatment activities taking place in other sectors and at other points in the patient’s trajectory. In the Danish data-intensive health system, such data are, in principle, already available across sectors through a common national digital health data infrastructure. Nevertheless, the collective opinion among stakeholders is that the ‘overview’ of the patient’s case is lacking. In this paper, we explore the striving for ‘overview’ among healthcare professionals in cross-sectoral management of type 2 diabetes, with a digital data retrieval system called SAMBLIK. SAMBLIK echoes a well-known story of effortless data flow, hoping to enable digital integration through technological innovation. Based on ethnographical fieldwork and concepts of data work and data experience, we outline a diverse set of ‘uses’ of SAMBLIK that enact different ‘overviews’. We preliminary delineate four enactments: 1) expedient overview, 2) glancing overview, 3) care-continuum overview, and 4) a non-overview. Outlining the multiplicity of SAMBLIK is the first step toward critically evaluating the role of technology in helping data users deal with the paradoxes of experiencing a need for more data along with raising amounts of data work
Digital Repair Chains in the Automotive Sector: Rapid Repair with 3D Technology
No full textThis paper presents the prototypical development and demonstration of a Rapid Repair Workflow designed to address challenges faced by manufacturing industries, particularly medium-sized automotive suppliers, in sourcing and replacing obsolete or unavailable machine components. The workflow integrates 3D scanning, digital repair, and additive manufacturing (3D printing) technologies to rapidly recreate damaged parts, reducing lead times, storage costs, and downtime. We outline the process stages – initial assessment, scanning, digital file preparation, additive manufacturing, and quality assurance – highlighting the tools and techniques employed. The prototype was successfully showcased at a trade fair, receiving positive feedback for its precision, ease of use, and potential for industrial application. Key challenges such as intellectual property issues, technical limitations of scanning and CAD tools, and quality assurance requirements are discussed. Future work will focus on automation, AI-driven damage analysis, expanded VR functionalities, and broader adoption of additive manufacturing methods. Overall, the Rapid Repair Workflow demonstrates significant potential to enhance maintenance practices and operational efficiency across industries
Idiosyncrasies, Forms of Work, and Capital: The Operational Context of Civic Data
No full textSuccessfully making civic datasets accessible to communities involves more than hosting them on a website. There are entire infrastructures that need to be aligned to ensure that those who need these datasets can access them in a timely, usable, and efficient manner. In this article, I use interviews and data ethnographies to unpack the operational context of a community’s civic data. This operational context I describe includes the data idiosyncrasies, forms of work, and capital that I engaged with during the data infrastructuring process. Such an operational context, as Loukissas argues, is a consequence of the settings from which data are extracted, is required to better understand the shortcomings in the data, and can help us draw more accurate conclusions from them. This article serves as a reminder of how data are never raw but are determined by the politics of data economy in which they operate. Such data are bound to the context from which they are generated, where meaning is negotiated by the multiple sociotechnical elements involved. Overall, this article contributes to scholarship about data infrastructures in the field of CSCW and the work that goes into operationalizing them
The Agency of Artificial Intelligence in microsocial decision making in the Ministry of Works and Transport: An analysis of the User-AI interaction in U-Turn System
Full text linkAs developing nations seek to increase the use of technology in their governance, the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in public sector organizations is gaining momentum. While existing research has predominantly explored AI's macro implications, this study investigates its microsocial effects on daily professional practices within public organizations. Focusing on the case of Trinidad and Tobago's Licensing Authority and its implementation of the U-Turn system, this research employs an organizational ethnography approach. By analyzing interviews, observations, and documents, the study aims to understand how employees interact with AI-based technology at the microsocial level. Initial findings highlight the significance of the law in shaping technological usage, with AI often serving as a manifestation of legal mandates. Furthermore, the introduction of AI prompts organizational transformations, necessitating new administrative practices to bridge technological gaps. Ultimately, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the nuanced interactions between employees and AI systems in public sector decision-making processes, shedding light on the evolving dynamics of organizational practices and knowledge construction
Collaborative Work with Highly Automated Marine Navigation Systems
No full textIn navigation applications, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can improve efficiency and decision making. It is not clear, however, how designers should account for human cooperation when integrating AI systems in navigation work. In a novel empirical study, we examine the transition in the maritime domain towards higher levels of machine autonomy. Our method involved interviewing technology designers (n = 9) and navigators aboard two partially automated ferries (n = 5), as well as collecting field observations aboard one of the ferries. The results indicated a discrepancy between how designers construed human-AI collaboration compared to navigators’ own accounts in the field. Navigators reflected upon their role as one of ‘backup,’ defined by ad-hoc control takeovers from the automation. Designers positioned navigators ‘in the loop’ of a larger control system but discounted the role of in-situ skills and heuristic decision making in all but the most controlled takeover actions. The discrepancy shed light on how integration of AI systems may be better aligned to human cooperation in navigation. This included designing AI systems that render computational activities more visible and that incorporate social cues that articulate human work in its natural setting. Positioned within the field of AI alignment research, the main contribution is a formulation of human-AI interaction design insights for future navigation and control room work
Folksonomies in Crowdsourcing Platforms: Three Tensions Associated with the Development of Shared Language in Distributed Groups
No full textMembers of cooperative groups can work together more effectively if they develop a shared language, i.e., specialized terminology to describe their shared work and work situations. However, distributed groups face barriers to doing so. To better understand how shared language can emerge in and support the work of distributed groups, we review the literature on folksonomies (a kind of shared language) in crowdsourcing systems (one type of distributed work). The review highlights three tensions associated with the development of folksonomies in crowdsourcing. A first problem is who gets to decide on adopted terminology. Crowdsourcing projects need to decide how to allocate power and how that power is supported. Second, different users of the language may have different needs. In particular, there might be tension if people tagging objects are not the same as those using these tags to search for content. Finally, projects need to decide when in the process of language development they want to intervene to maintain a balance between a stable ontology and the ability of the project to accommodate ongoing changes. We illustrate these considerations by reviewing how they are handled in the story-sharing site Archive of Our Own, the citizen-science project GravitySpy and the photo-sharing site Flickr
The Legacy of Coordinative Practice: How the Mesh of Formal and Informal Articulation Work Through Time Affects a Shipyard in Transition
No full textThis article explores the balance, and the shift in balance, between technologies and practices that coordinate work. The empirical data stems from a primarily qualitative study of a Norwegian shipyard in a phase of transition, where new models of collaboration emerge due to changes in the company environment. The article highlights the interplay between formal and informal articulation work, as well as the role of coordinative IT artifacts in this regard. With this background, the findings show that the balance (between coordinative technologies and practices) shifts depending on circumstances. Thus, the more formal coordination gains importance as transitions increases the need for detailed instructions. The findings also show that the existing IT infrastructure (the legacy) lacks the granularity as a coordinative artifact to facilitate necessary change in the organizational work arrangement, and how the workers cope with such issues. Based on this, the paper provides insights into how articulation work and its sociomaterial aspects develops over time in the interplay of organizational and technological change (or lack thereof)
Fleeting Alliances and Frugal Collaboration in Piecework: A Video-Analysis of Food Delivery Work in India
No full textFood delivery platforms are designed to match on-demand workers with jobs and then manage, monitor, and assess their performance. These platforms provide workers with a digital representation of delivery work. Once a worker accepts a delivery job they need to deal with the complexities of an unsettled urban landscape with varied infrastructures, traffic, and regulations. In particular, the Global South presents a demanding context for this type of work, given less clearly mapped addresses alongside other socio-cultural intricacies. In order to understand how food delivery workers bridge gaps and mismatches between the demands of the app and the realities encountered in situ, for this paper we shadowed six delivery workers over the course of their working day delivering food in Pune, India. The six workers included a complete novice and more experienced riders. We used helmet mounted cameras to record the delivery work, and how our participants managed the extra demands of food delivery work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our moment-by-moment analysis of the video data is informed by the methodological traditions of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. While the food delivery platform imposes a detailed workflow expected to be performed alone by the worker, our detailed video analysis reveals the collaborative nature of delivery work. We highlight how workers draw upon their ability to participate in ‘fleeting alliances’ and produce ‘frugal collaboration’ with co-located others, such as other delivery workers or security guards. This allows them to resolve everyday troubles, often learning or imparting ‘the tricks of the trade’ in the process. While gig platforms have commonly been presented as disruptive technologies for coordinating, regulating, and assessing gig workers individually and independently, our findings highlight collaboration as a critically important aspect of food delivery work