1,805 research outputs found
Victims of scenario-thinking. On the making of optimism and unrealistic expectations about ICTs
No full textThe pervasiveness of ICTs in healthcare is modifying professional-patient relationship. The de- bate, as often happens with innovations, is polarized and technology is considered with enthusiasm or sheer pessimism. Several works have tried to move beyond this simplistic positioning and address the intricacies and complexities of adopting technologies (Pols 2012; Piras and Miele 2020). Despite such efforts, the dichotomy tends to repeat itself and to move beyond we need to understand how this is created and reinforced.
Focusing on the professional community of computer scientists, the paper analyzes techno- enthusiasm to understand how it originates, how it is re-created over time and discursively performed and enacted.
The argumentation will be twofold. Firstly, I will show how the professional culture of informatics is imbued with high expectations with regard to the possibility of reshaping society through technology. In the scientific community, these values are promoted favoring the presentation of success cases instead of reflections about failures.
Secondly, I shall focus on the role of ‘scenarios’ in shaping an enthusiastic perspective with regard to technology. Scenarios, formally created to present a realistic use case, are powerful rhetorical devices that shape the desired future and foster a culture techno-enthusiasm by oversimplifying the complexities that technology will need to address thus making possible develop over-optimistic expectations regarding its adoption.
I argue that both techno-enthusiasm and techno-pessimism, far from being personal positioning, demarcate professional boundaries they are reproduced in patterned activities. Moving beyond the dichotomy requires identifying the locus and the practices in which each professional community performs and reinforces between techno-enthusiasm or techno-pessimism.
Pols, J. (2012), Care at a distance: on the closeness of technology. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Piras, E.M. and Miele, F. (in press) On digital intimacy: redefining provider–patient relationships in remote monitoring. Sociology of Health & Illness
Enrico Piras, Manuale delle monete medioevali e moderne coniate in Sardegna.
No full textDhénin Michel. Enrico Piras, Manuale delle monete medioevali e moderne coniate in Sardegna.. In: Revue numismatique, 6e série - Tome 23, année 1981 p. 173
Enrico Piras, Manuale delle monete medioevali e moderne coniate in Sardegna.
No full textDhénin Michel. Enrico Piras, Manuale delle monete medioevali e moderne coniate in Sardegna.. In: Revue numismatique, 6e série - Tome 23, année 1981 p. 173
Infrastructuring primary prevention outside healthcare institutions: the governance of a Workplace Health Promotion program
No full textWorkplace Health Promotion (WHP) programs are undergoing significant changes mixing the healthy lifestyle promotion with the self-tracking opportunities offered by digital technologies. The shift to more pervasive (or intrusive) forms of primary prevention for chronic diseases requires to justify the existence of healthcare infrastructures in work settings and a redefinition of the role of employers and healthcare institutions. The paper describes and analyses a WHP initiative conducted in Italy to illustrate the infrastructuring of the governance of technologically-enhanced prevention in the workplace
Kairotic and chronological knowing: diabetes logbooks in-and-out of the hospital
No full textPurpose – The paper reflects on the role of knowledge artefacts in the patient-provider relationship across the organisational boundaries of the clinical setting. Drawing on the analysis of the diabetes logbook, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the role of knowledge artefacts in a fragmented system of knowledge through the study of two distinct practices: “logbook compiling” and “consultation in the surgery”. Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical framework of analysis is rooted in the tradition of practice-based studies which envisions knowledge as the emerging, precarious and socially constructed product of being involved in a practice. The paper follows a designed qualitative research, conducting semi-structured interviews, participant observation and artefact analysis.
Findings – The knowledge artefacts support different and partially irreducible forms of knowledge. Knowing-in-practice is accomplished by means of different activities which contribute to the reshaping of the knowledge artefact itself. The analysis of the “knowledge artefact-in-use” reveals that different actors (doctors and patients) adopt two different perspectives when investigating the chronic condition. Clinicians are interested in a chronological representation of patient data while patients and families are interested in making sense of specific situations, adopting a kairotic perspective (Kairos: the right moment) that emphasises the instant in which something significant for someone happens.
Originality/value – The analysis of the knowledge artefacts-in-use has a twofold outcome. On one hand, it illustrates the mutual shaping of knowing, artefacts and practices. On the other hand, it shows how knowledge artefact can become pivotal resources in a fragmented system of knowledge
Digital cultural probes. Indagare il quotidiano, progettare tecnologie
No full textCultural Probes are a qualitative research technique developed in the field of Human Computer Interaction to design technologies by entrusting participants with tools to capture fragments of everyday experience. Here, a revisitation of the technique is proposed to support the investigation of the experience of health and illness, which are areas removed from direct observation and difficult to recall with a richness of detail by means of the most common investigation techniques. The most visible feature of the methodological innova- tion lies in the use of an instant messaging system (WhatsApp) as a “probe”, on the one hand allowing participants to share their respective fragments of experience with each other and, on the other hand, granting researchers the possibility of guiding participants with re-spect to the objects of observation. Here I present a use case of the technique and a reflection on epistemic assumptions, limitations and possible areas of application in health re-search
“This is not something I should be doing”. Junction work and professional identity of nurses grappling with health information systems
No full textThis paper reflects on how information systems in healthcare contexts can trigger complex processes that produce effects beyond the field of application envisaged by the designers. Drawing on an ethnographic study conducted in an oncology department, this work presents the processes by which a tool designed around (and together with) doctors became the pivotal point of the overall reshaping of medical, nursing and clerical work in the department. Specific focus on the work practices of the nurses shows how this technology has been a key factor in modifying not only their activities but also their professional identity, in which “information management” has become more important than “patient care”
- …
