Proximity: Relationships, Records, e-Health - Person-centredness near and far

When data protection and confidentiality is debated "the need to know" is often wheeled out as a rationale for access to personal identifiable data.

See the following:
NHS Confidentiality Consultation - FIPR Response (esp. #18).
DoH, Confidentiality, UK

In addition, if I need to access the record of patient held at hospital 'x' from hospital 'y' what is the health care relationship that prompts and justifies this need?

At present visiting nursing and care homes, you go knowing that data capture and recording (care assessment) is a fundamental requirement. Having a secure laptop for community has long been promised. While tech solutions are available and implemented elsewhere, my lack of such technology prompts me to imagine a future visit. ...

Pulling up at the nursing home I walk up the drive, ring the bell. While I wait the new tablet device in its bag has already introduced itself to the home. As I am allowed in - my identity assured - the tablet continues its dialogue, it:

1. Downloads and updates existing active client data.
2. Downloads additional data as per the agreed dataset on the new referral.
3. Checks on items 1-2 with a review of recent prescribing for key psychotropic medicines.
4. It checks the most recent NICE, Cochrane evidence and reconciling the local care knowledge. (This may seem excessive at present, but come personalised medicine this will be crucial).
5. Will check on most recent clinical reviews and due dates.
6. The h2cm template is there ;-) ready to present the care domain summary for the general physician ... and possibly (roles?) the next care professional to visit this home and this resident.

The significance of relationships is usually denoted by distance. Personal space is rather obviously spatial. This is how we recognise (well one of the ways!) the meaning and significance of an intimate relationship. In care situations with individuals who are confused and potentially aggressive we are conscious of the need to have due regard and respect for that person's personal space. Spaces and boundaries have to be negotiated in a variety of ways and means. 

Health information technology has already made effective use of role-based access to systems. If we take person-centred care to the nth degree, proximity can also count as it does in mobile health (m-health). Whilst to effect a role is to be in a certain location and context (sat at the office PC in the hospital) roles are organisationally and politically defined. Proximity is also contextual and situated in other ways, my proximity to:

• the nursing home;
• the individual's room;
• the individual themselves.
• (and their relatives)

While telecare / informatics can deliver a dividend in remote care, it is essential that it can also demonstrably support person-centred care. The best way (clinically assured) to do that for many activities is person-to-person contact. Just because one-side of the relationship may not recall the encounter as little as five minutes after, does not mean that there is no value in sustaining the ring of the bell, the exchange of s-miles, the record that results and other background conversations.

Image source:
Gestalt - proximity
http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm

Call for Papers: 1st Int. Workshop on Pervasive Care for People with Dementia and their Carers (PCPDC-2011)

(To the webmasters of http://www.pervasivehealth.org please check the status of your site - 'attack site')

Dublin, Ireland, 23 May 2011

http://trail.ulster.ac.uk/pcpdc/

To be held in conjunction with the 5th International ICST Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare 2011

The global population of persons aged 60 and over is rising dramatically. Between 2006 and 2050, the number of people aged 60 and over will double from 650 million to 2 billion people representing 22% of humanity. One group of the ageing population that is particularly vulnerable to loss of independence is those affected by dementia. It is estimated that around 820,000 people in the UK have dementia. Recently emerging computing and assistive technology have been used to attempt to improve the quality of life for people with dementia..

The workshop aims to provide a forum for discussion on challenges and opportunities in bringing technology to support people with dementia. The workshop will feature the theme of ‘engaging people with pervasive technology’.

Research topics included in the workshop

This workshop will feature the theme of  ‘engaging people with pervasive technology’ in dementia research. Researchers from academic, healthcare, industrial and third party organisations are invited to contribute. Early researchers and researchers from healthcare are particularly welcome. Research areas include, but are not limited to:

Theme 1 – What are the opportunities of pervasive care technology?

Development of pervasive ICT systems
Human computer interface design
Behaviour monitoring and activity recognition
Knowledge representation and dissemination
Data analysis and interpretation
Sensor design and application

Theme 2 – User engagement

Key issues emerging when working with people who have decreased capacity for consent
Ethical issues for implementation
Methods for engagement
Pitfalls of engaging people with dementia, their carers and intermediate users

Important dates

Submission deadline:          25th February 2011
Notification of acceptance: 25th March 2011
Camera-ready copy due:    4th April 2011
Conference / Workshop:    23rd – 26th / 23rd May 2011

Format

Submitted papers should not be longer than 4 pages in standard IEEE two-column format.

For more detailed formatting instructions please see http://www.pervasivehealth.org/?page_name=author_skit.

Accepted papers will be published online in IEEE Xplore Digital Library (to be confirmed).

Call for Papers - 2011 CHI Workshop on Bridging Practices, Theories, and Technologies to Support Reminiscence

CALL FOR PAPERS

CHI Workshop on Bridging Practices, Theories, and Technologies to Support Reminiscence 2011
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~danco/remchiwork/

CHI 2011 Workshop

This one-day workshop explores how HCI-related practice and research can understand and support reminiscence. The workshop has two main goals. First, we hope to bring together academics and practitioners from a variety of backgrounds, disciplines, levels of experience, and approaches to studying and supporting reminiscing. Second, we hope to explore a variety of topics around current and potential uses of technology to support reminiscence, including but not limited to:

- understanding people's current practices around reminiscing;
- exploring empirical studies and theories of memory that might inform technology designs;
- presenting, critiquing, and evaluating existing technologies for reminiscence,
- considering how technology might support new reminiscing practices, and
- supporting social aspects of reminiscence.

We are particularly interested in participants from outside the CHI community to foster new perspectives and collaborations. Our plan is to conduct three short discussion-focused panels organized around participants' interests. Those discussions will ground small groups in articulating interesting directions, studies, designs, and outlines of potential grant and book proposals at the intersection of reminiscing and technology

SUBMISSION

Interested participants should mail position papers of up to 6 pages in .pdf versions of the CHI Extended Abstracts format to danco at cs.cornell.edu by January 14, 2011. Papers should clearly express how the authors' participation will further the goals of the workshop: what do authors offer and hope to gain by participating? They should also clearly, but briefly, present participating authors' backgrounds, in order to support our goals of creating a diverse group of participants.

We will notify accepted participants on or before February 11, 2001. A limited amount of funding will be available, primarily to support attendance for people from other disciplines who are not regular CHI attendees. The workshop will be held on Sunday May 8, 2011 in Vancouver, Canada. Please note that at least one author of an accepted position paper must register for the workshop and for one or more days of the CHI 2011 conference.

IMPORTANT DATES

- Jan 14, 2011: Position papers due
- Feb 11, 2011: Notifications of participation
- Apr 1, 2011: Final versions of position papers (to be shared with other participants)
- May 8, 2011: (Sunday) The workshop! (Here's the list of all workshops.)
- May 9-12 2011: CHI itself

ORGANIZERS

- Dan Cosley, Information Science, Cornell University danco at cs.cornell.edu
- Maurice Mulvenna, School of Computing and Mathematics, University of Ulster md.mulvenna at ulster.ac.uk
- Victoria Schwanda, Information Science, Cornell University vls48 at cornell.edu
- S. Tejaswi Peesapati, Information Science, Cornell University stp53 at cornell.edu

New: The Journal of Humanities and Information Systems

Dear colleagues

It is my pleasure to announce a new journal, published by IBIMA, that will cater for articles in the interdisciplinary field of Information Systems and the Humanities (JHIS). This is a call for submissions for the first edtion of JHIS.

JOURNAL DESCRIPTION

The Journal of Humanities and Information Systems (JHIS) is an international peer reviewed and applied research journal that publishes papers on the symbiotic relationship between the two disciplines of Information Systems and the Humanities. Its unique focus will be research on Humanities-enriched IS, but other Humanities-Computing papers and case studies will also be considered. All papers will be subjected to a multiple blind peer review process. Papers should contribute to the existing body of knowledge of the domain in terms of theory and/or practice.

MISSION

JHIS aims to create an international forum to discuss and evaluate studies that implement theoretical constructs borrowed from the Humanities in various aspects of Information Systems, as well as investigations regarding the application of information technology in the Humanities. The creation of
publication opportunities for research with refreshing angles, some borrowed from other sciences, is a conscious effort to share interest and useful research and to counteract rigid procedures that are "stifling the intellectual advancement of our discipline" (Shoib and Nandhakumar, 2009).

SCOPE

Topics of interest for this journal include, but are not limited to, the following list:

• Linguistics and Information Systems
• History and Information Systems
• Art and Information Systems
• Philosophy and Information Systems
• Law and Information Systems
• Hermeneutics and Information Systems

CALL FOR ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS TO JHIS

Since there still are limited publication opportunities for Information System scientists (cf. Straub, 2009:v) in comparison with some other older, well-established disciplines, new opportunities should be embraced and used in order to build our discipline. Therefore, our colleagues are invited to submit some of their research outputs to this new outlet.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS AND PEER REVIEWERS

Please let me know if you would be interested to become an associate editor or peer reviewer of JHIS.
The editors and reviewers of JHIS should be like diamond miners taking a positive view while looking for "exciting forays into new research domains" (Straub, 2009:vii). The general aim in the review processes of this new journal will be to be inclusive and developmental rather than to perform "a
modern hygiene ritual", because we agree with Wastell and MacMaster (2008:64) that "a high rejection rate implies a collective failure of scholarship not the intellectual prosperity of a field".

For more information about the journal and submissions, see:
http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/JHIS/jhis.html

Jan H. Kroeze, School of Computing, University of South Africa
(editor-in-chief)

My source:
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 24, No. 451
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist

HCI 2011 Health, Wealth and Happiness Call for Papers

The 25th British Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI2011)

July 4th - 8th, 2011 at Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.

The HCI Educators conference, Workshops and Tutorials will be held on 4th and 5th July, 2011 and a Doctorial Consortium on the 5th July. The main conference runs from the 6th-8th July, 2011. HCI 2011 is organised by the PaCT Lab (Northumbria University) in cooperation with the British Computer Society.

This year we will be looking for papers to put in our alt.hci sessions. So if you think your work doesn't usually make it into this conference then maybe this year is your year.

Accepted papers will be published by BCS in the annual conference proceedings, freely available online in BCS Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC) and will also be included in the ACM digital library.

Important Dates:

• Full Paper and Workshop submission: 21st January, 2011
• Workshop notification of acceptance: 11th February, 2011
• Work in Progress and alt.chi submission: 18th February, 2011
• Short and Posters  submission: 18th February, 2011
• Demos and Experiences submission: 18th February, 2011
• Doctoral Consortium 18th February, 2011
• Panels: 18th February, 2011
• Notification of Acceptance for all other categories: 8th April 2011
• Camera-ready copy for proceedings required by 6th May 2011

Deadline for author registration: 4th May 2011

Conference: 4th July - 8th July, 2011

Conference Scope and Description:

Human Computer Interaction is a key area of computing. This is the leading conference in the field of Human Computer Interaction in the UK. It covers the design, evaluation and application of techniques and approaches for interacting with devices and services.  HCI is now on its 25th conference and at this anniversary we ask you to reflect on our theme of Health, Wealth and Happiness. Technology is posed to play a growing part in our health and maintaining well being into older age; wealth manifests itself in many ways, many of which we do not always recognise - relationships, richness of life experience, creativity and innovation, knowledge and qualities of character. Lastly is there a relationship between happiness and technology use, will more gadgets increase our well being? And as ever contributions in any aspect of HCI are welcome.

Suggested topics:

We solicit original research and technical papers not published elsewhere including the following topics:

• Affective interaction
• Aesthetic interaction
• Art and interaction
• Bodily interaction
• Cyber-relationships, sex and eroticism
• Design and Evaluation methods
• Ethnographic and field studies
• Ethics and HCI
• Experience Design
• Fun and Play
• Health informatics and technology
• Human values
• Information visualization and presentation
• Interaction Criticism
• Moods, meditation and relaxation
• Musical and audio interaction
• Novel interaction techniques and devices
• Privacy, Security and Trust
• Social networking
• Spirituality and Beliefs
• Sustainability and HCI
• Ubiquitous, pervasive, and mobile interaction
• Universal design
• Usability studies
• User Experience
• Wearables and fashion
• Wellbeing and technology

Keynote Speakers

• Abigail Sellon, Microsoft Research, UK
• Gregory Abowd, Georgia Tech, USA

Paper Submission:

Submissions must be in an electronic form as PDF format. All submissions should be formatted to the ACM standard, see http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates , and will appear on-line in the BCS EWiCS series and the ACM Digital Library.

Submissions should be made through the EasyChair system, which will open for submissions in November and will be linked from the conference website http://www.hci2011.co.uk/ with detailed instructions. We have put together an international review panel. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by at least 3 peer-reviewers, selected by the appropriate chairs. Additional guidelines can be found on the conference's website.

It is a condition of acceptance that at least one author must register for each accepted paper, no later than the early bird deadline of 4th May 2011.

Care design: c/o DDC Copenhagen

On Monday afternoon I explored the city of Copenhagen walking to several sites - the Tivoli Gardens, the Tycho Brahe Planetarium and other parts of this lovely city. I ended up spending a couple of hours at the Danish Design Center.

Like my occasional visits to London's museums, the DDC although very small provided a couple of pearls. One display across a wall upstairs outlined the main forms of design theory and practice:

• The USER as designer
• TECHNOLOGY in the design process
• New MATERIALS and smart design
• NATURE
• SOCIAL design and CARE design
• GREEN design
• ART design
• EMOTIONAL design
• REPLACEMENT due to changing fashions (built in obsolescence!)
• SERVICE and CONCEPT design

The following text was displayed to describe SOCIAL design and CARE design:

The population pyramid has changed shape. The working-age group is shrinking compared to the group of people of retirement age. In addition, there is the large segment of the so-called weak - particularly in the 3rd world. Thus, social design and care design will be big and important design areas in the future, because the solutions will seek to strengthen the health care sector and improve conditions in the 3rd world and for underpriviledged people in general. Parameters such as increased dependency, quality of life and dignity are crucial elements in solutions relating to social design and care design. DDC display; August 23 2010.

Many themes come together here. Some are represented in the tags below. Care design is much more than what we might consider as 'standard design' aspects, such as; user interface [UI] and user experience [UX]. Care design is even more dependent upon user engagement.

There is another dependency that as yet has a '?' in the data entry box.

Care design needs coherent forms of personal, social and civic responsibility. These are yet to emerge as think tanks, governments and health experts seek (urgent) solutions.

In comparison to the above the 200 character limit on labels (tags) on Blogger presents a very small challenge. I can well imagine the outline of a book on 'care design': the result would be a big tome; but this would not just be (PJ inspired) hyperbole. Care design is not new, but the DDC text above must accentuate the individual, and not just care design at the public and private sector hospital level. Care design in an individual context is mission critical. Heady content - for books, websites and policies - as befits our times.

Thank you DDC, Copenhagen: wonderful indeed.

iConference 2011

From: Jonathan Grudin
Subject: A personal view on iConference 2011

Hello,

Please publicize iConference 2011, which will be in Seattle February 8-11 and has a submission deadline of August 30.

I’d like to add special encouragement. Some people including me see this as a possible turning point for the Information Conferences. The “iCaucus” has rapidly expanded to include over 25 schools in Europe, Asia, and North America, but more to the point, this iConference is the first to reach outside that community. It has a large, varied, illustrious conference and program committee, whose members have said they will attend. It was organized further in advance. The next conference, in Toronto, is already being planned as well.

Some people note that it feels like CHI in 1983 or CSCW in 1988, a coalescing and opportunity. It may or may not turn out that way, but an astute student or senior person, while not abandoning CSCW or CHI or other venues, might be well-advised to also participate in an iConference or two. (Starting with this conference, proceedings will be in the ACM Digital Library.) When universities ramp up again, iSchools are likely to be hiring. I’ve expressed my vote of confidence by publishing a short paper that I liked a lot in iConference 2010, despite it not being in the ACM DL.

At the end of a recent NSF sociotechnical research symposium, Geoff Bowker gave a spirited exhortation to participate and form the vanguard of the iConference series. In that spirit, please forward this to people who might be interested, encouraging them to consider submitting and to attending.

Cheers – Jonathan

(full disclosure, I’m co-chairing the conference with Harry Bruce – but the conference and its opportunity was the work of those who came before; Geoff was responding the conference as it already exists)

My source: CI researchers list

Community Informatics and Older People: A Call for Papers

This call for papers is for a special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics on ICTs and Older Persons. Examples of activities using ICTs for support of the elderly in Less Developed Countries are particularly encouraged.

Community Informatics and Older People: A Call for Papers

If you have an article (or an idea for one) contact
Geneloeb Aronin, Ph.D. by July 15th geneloeb at gmail.com.

The peer-reviewed Journal of Community Informatics (www.ci-journal.net) is inviting submissions of articles for a special issue on community informatics and elderly. Community Informatics is concerned with the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to enable and empower local communities including for personal, social, cultural or economic development of and within communities.

There has been a recent a surge in the use of ICTs involving the geriatric community, elderly and those associated with their care or needs. This activity has taken several forms, including: the elderly communicating with others by computers and other technologies; technical devices used to monitor needs or send warnings; information from governments is now available online including training programs for older people to access such information; and the use of ICTs to support community caregivers for the elderly, self-help and self-care for the elderly, and as an infrastructure for the development of virtual community connections among the elderly and between the elderly and others are burgeoning areas of community care and in some places part of the public health system. We would very much welcome explorations and systematic (and other) accounts of these processes and others.

Now is the opportunity to examine model practices of ICT to benefit communities of older persons and their families, to support their care and their caregivers within communities and to suggest new ways in which ICTs can be used to maximize community based initiatives and opportunities.

Articles in the planned issue will focus on the use of ICTs for personal, social, cultural or economic development of, and within, communities for the elderly. We would look to include paradigms for reaching out to elderly people who can not yet access ICTs for these benefits; demonstrate improved technical frameworks for community based ICT applications; show the effectiveness of applications and new ways technology may be applied. Examples of activities using ICTs for support of the elderly in Less Developed Countries are particularly encouraged.

What other ideas and suggestions do you have? Email the co-ordinator for this issue,
Geneloeb: geneloeb at gmail.com

With Best Wishes for an Even Better Day

Gene-loeb
Gene-loeb Aronin, Ph.D.

International Journal of User Driven Healthcare (IJUDH) CfP

Dear Mr. Jones

In view of your work in patient-centered care, I’d like to invite you and/or your colleagues to submit a paper to this Special Issue of the new journal described further below and via the web link provided. I think our global readers would be very interested in your thoughts (and projects) on innovative ways to get relevant healthcare information into the hands of ‘users’ (both patients and providers), within the user-driven EBM paradigm, per below.

Please also share this call for papers with your colleagues.

Thanks for your consideration,

Susan Ross, MD

International Journal of User Driven Healthcare (IJUDH) Call for Papers

Editor-in-Chief:
Rakesh Biswas,
Center for Scientific Research and Development (CSRD),
PCMS Campus, India

Published: Quarterly

Call for Papers - Special Issue:

Submission Due Date: July 1, 2010
Special Issue On User Driven Healthcare and Evidence-based Medicine

Guest Editors:
Susan Ross, MD, FRCPC

Introduction

User Driven Healthcare (UDH) is part consumer-driven healthcare, part narrative medicine, and part Health 2.0. It stems from a concept of participatory healthcare whereby all stakeholders, enabled by information, software, and cyber-community, focus on healthcare value. But where does Evidence-based Medicine (EBM) fit into this framework? It is sometimes forgotten that EBM is a three-legged stool, comprised of the triad of evidence +provider expertise + patient preferences. In this EBM framework, provider expertise is needed to bridge the inferential gap between population-based evidence and the individual patient. And each patient's values and preferences should narrow that inferential gap further. But since the introduction of EBM nearly two decades ago, the primary focus of EBM proponents has been on Evidence, at the expense of patient preferences and provider expertise. Perhaps this is why the promise of EBM to foster the most efficient and high quality healthcare has not yet been realized.

Objective of the Special Issue

This Special Issue will focus on the following questions: Is the recent emergence of User Driven Healthcare really a new, post-EBM paradigm for healthcare, or just an overdue consideration of the other two legs of the original EBM stool? How might this trend affect all stakeholders?

Recommended Topics

Topics to be discussed in this special issue include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Developing valid patient-level evidence using the Web
• Evidence generation—clinical research strategies using social media and mobile technologies
• Examples of UDH to a) help formulate the right questions to ask in EBM; b) develop answers to those questions; c) disseminate the answers to patients and providers with a need to know; and d) test the impact of UDH-generated Evidence on patient outcomes
• Helping online patients sift the ‘wheat’ from the ‘chaff’—information management for patients in an EBM world
• How to incorporate patient preferences and values into ambulatory care decision-making (i.e., into the 10 minute visit)
• Measuring the impact of UDH on patient outcomes
• Patient-level decisions vs. population-level evidence (bridging the inferential gap)
• Pharmaceutical communication strategies using social media—impact on healthcare quality and costs in an EBM framework
• Place of social media in EBM—patient and physician online communities
• Practice of UDH vs. EBM around the world
• Regulatory issues of evidence dissemination by industry using social media in healthcare Statistical and other evaluative methods to assess the validity and reliability of evidence developed using social media and mobile technologies
• Trends in N-of-1 studies, and their relevance to EBM and UDH
• Use of collective intelligence to solve healthcare problems for individuals and communities

Submission

Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit papers for this special theme issue on User Driven Healthcare and Evidence-based Medicine on or before July 1, 2010. Submissions received after this date will be reviewed for possible publication in subsequent issues of the journal. All submissions must be original and may not be under review by another publication. INTERESTED AUTHORS SHOULD CONSULT THE JOURNAL’S GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS at http://www.igi-global.com/development/author_info/guide.asp. All submitted papers will be reviewed on a double-blind, peer review basis. Papers must follow APA style for reference citations.

All submissions and inquiries should be directed to the attention of:

Susan Ross, MD
Guest Editor
Email:sdross720@gmail.com

Development of a robotic health assistant to the management of malaria among nomads

The following very interesting item was posted on the Healthcare Information For All by 2015 [HIFA2015] list (I have added some formatting and links).

Dear All,

We received a Grand Challenges Exploration grant (a Gates Foundation initiative) for the development of a robotic health assistant to the management of malaria among nomads whose access to health service has always posed a concern. A robotic health assistant was constructed using aluminum casing. The device has three components: an interactive non-replaceable section that processes information and provides output. A replaceable laboratory containing supplies for qualitatively distinguishing between fevers associated with malaria and those that are non-malaria and a second replaceable component, a dispensary containing analgesics, ant malaria [*] and antibiotics for treating different types of fevers. The user communicates with the device using three buttons and receives feedback in Fulfude the nomadic Fulani language. The device interviews the user, processes the user’s responses and gives instructions. The accuracy of the information provided by the patient (user), and the ability of the user to carry out the instructions are critical to illness outcome. The device is solar-powered, is able to repeat previous instructions as many times as the patient desires, and provides referral.

Ten such robotic health assistants (ROBODOCs) were deployed among two main groups of nomads (those with previous experience using communication devices such as handheld mobile phones and those without such experience). The volunteer user was given basic information on the use, the switch-ON button, charging the device, and replacing the components. The user contacts a Field Assistant with hand-held mobile phone who in turn alerts the Research Supervisor whenever a case is managed. The Supervisor holds a phone interview with user and beneficiary patient at the end of the consultation with Robodoc as part of the quality assurance.

Robodoc was withdrawn after three months of deployment. Members of the community, beneficiaries and users were interviewed. Each device was examined for durability in the field. The ten units managed more than 80 cases of fever and appropriately diagnosed and treated 90% of them. Previous experience with using a modern communication device was not an important factor in the use of the Robodoc. The nomads found the device very useful and made suggestions on how it may be used for the management of several other health problems besides fevers.

We are keen to publish the findings from testing the device in a peer-reviewed journal. Does anyone have an idea of any journal that may be interested in this sort of research?

Oladele Akogun

HIFA2015 profile: Oladele Akogun is a professor of public health parasitology at the Federal University of Technology, Yola, Nigeria and Principal Scientist at the Common Heritage Foundation/Nigeria. He has spent over 24 years carrying out research and community service on access of community populations to health care delivery among marginalized populations. He is a pioneer researcher and contributor to the development of the community directed intervention approach to health service delivery now used in onchocerciasis control in Africa. With a Grand Challenges exploration (GCE) grant from The Gates Foundation, he is leading a team to develop a robotic health assistant for the management of malaria among nomads. He sits on two committees of the WHO/African region and on 5 committees at the Federal Ministry of Health, Nigeria. He has worked at various times as consultant to Constella-Futures, Africare and WHO where he worked for a year as Technical Adviser. He has made presentations to the African Regional Ministers forum on Primary Health, the US Congressional subcommittee on international aid and PAHO. He holds a PhD (1991) from the University of Jos and a Master of Public Health (2008) from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Some of his views are expressed in http://blog4globalhealth.wordpress.com/bios/akogun1/
akoguno AT yahoo.com

[*Notes from HIFA2015 moderator:
1. I think this should read 'antimalarials'.
2. A picture of the device in action is available on the Gates Foundation website at:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/global-health/Pages/grand-challenges-explorations.aspx
'Oladele Akogun of the Common Heritage Foundation in Nigeria is testing a 'fever kit' for use among nomadic populations. The device is equipped with simple diagnostic tools and prerecorded treatment instructions in the native language to help nomadic caregivers accurately diagnose and treat fevers in a way that reduces mortality and drug resistance.' Thanks, Neil PW]
(In re-posting I have added the image at left.)

Global Pulse 2010 March 29th - 31st #gp2010

I have just registered for:


From March 29^th through March 31^st you will have the chance to participate in something truly exciting. Inspired by President Obama’s “New Beginnings” speech to Cairo University, the U.S. Government is hosting Global Pulse 2010, an innovative, online brainstorming discussion.

During this unique event, individuals throughout the world will have a chance to participate in and influence a global conversation centered on 10 hot-button social issues facing the global community within the fields of science and technology, entrepreneurship, and human development.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

GANM's - Dr. Patricia Abbott will be a featured expert during the event. She will host a discussion on E-Health from 11:00am-noon (eastern time) on March 30, 2010.

Why is Global Pulse 2010 important?

Global Pulse 2010 will offer a unique way for community members to connect and engage, build new relationships and share their ideas on how we can strengthen our global partnerships to better address our shared global challenges.

Global Pulse 2010 is an open forum that will highlight ten broad topics:

• Empowering Women and Girls
• Enabling Essential Education
• Building Stronger Partnerships
• Exercising Political and Civil Rights
• Inspiring a New Generation
• Promoting Global Health
• Advancing Entrepreneurship, Trade & Economic Opportunity
• Fostering Science, Technology & Innovation
• Supporting a Sustainable Planet
• Pursuing Grand Challenges

How to Register for Global Pulse 2010?

To register please visit:https://www.collaborationjam.com/minijam3/globalpulse2010/registration/
For more information, please visit us at www.GlobalPulse2010.gov

You may also join us on Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, and LinkedIn to stay up to date on key Global Pulse 2010 activities. Stay tuned for more information on Global Pulse 2010!

PLEASE NOTE: We want to hear from your network. If you know of others who would be interested in participating in this event, please feel free to forward this email. As there are a limited number of virtual seats in Global Pulse 2010, we ask that these individuals complete and submit this brief form available at www.GlobalPulse2010.gov/registration Pending the number of available seats, slotted individuals will be notified so that they may then formally register to participate in Global Pulse 2010.

My source:
GANM (Global Alliance for Nursing and Midwifery)

CfP International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP)

********************* CALL FOR PAPERS *********************
(edited here for length)
*** INAUGURAL ISSUE ***

SUBMISSION DUE DATE: 1st May 2010

International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP)

Official publication of the Information Resources Management Association
http://www.igi-global.com/IJPOP

Co-Editors-in-Chief: Steve Goschnick & Sandrine Balbo
Published: Semi-annual (both in Print and Electronic form)

Mission of IJPOP:

The International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP) is cross-discipline in range yet singularly focused on empowering individuals to conceptualise, design, program, configure and orchestrate Internet-powered mashups, game mods (modifications), aggregate and structure personal media and build standalone cloud-based and client-side applications (on smartphones, netbooks, laptops, desktops, home network and novel appliances) – into self-fashioned tools and products that ultimately suit the user's own unique needs and aspirations. Other individuals may well take up such apps, mods and mashups for themselves, further customising, enhancing and embellishing them, or they may in part be used in a social or family context (to the benefit of the collective aspirations of those Social Worlds of which the individual is a part) – nonetheless, the focus of composition, development and customisation is on a product for oneself, upon theory, concepts, techniques, methodologies and ultimately tools that service a market of one. Our mission is to be the first journal that comes to mind to academics and practitioners alike and remain the best with regard to all aspects of People-Oriented Programming. Our papers and reviews will be insightful and compelling to both educators and researchers, and often to a wider audience too – the people for whom this paradigm of software development has come about.

SCOPE:

People-Oriented Programming requires high-level tools to empower both the technical and non-technical user, which in turn calls upon research into meta-models that inform design and construction, that aid comparisons of these tools, and facilitates the interchange of content between them. The meta-models of most interest to POP initially, are drawn from two disparate disciplines – the Task Analysis (TA) and Agent-Oriented (AO) paradigms– both of which often have models with representations of entities matching the needs of POP, e.g. goal, task, object, agent, individual, role, intention and communication. Several AO architectures and methodologies have called upon branches of Psychology to formulate AO meta-models that incorporate mentalistic notions such as perception, motivation and intention, but which are most often aimed at constructing artificial humans and the like. In POP we too call upon those same Psychologies and similarly enhance and formulate meta-models and methodologies influenced by them, but with the intention of augmenting and empowering the individual human, in areas where they themselves desire aid or have identified a gap in their own abilities or resources, which they want to enhance.

From Sociology, POP draws upon ethnography with a focus on self-ethnography using tools such as cultural probes, life blogs and life logs to capture aspects of the individual's own life, themselves (or through a life coach), from which they draw the desire and/or frame the need for new technological artefacts to be used in their own lives. Interactivity, with respect to facilitating and streamlining a regular user's intention to build their own artefacts, and situatedness in terms of the individual's current location and activities, are two other facets of HCI (human computer interaction) that POP encompasses.

Video gaming is the first application area where large numbers of everyday users have been able to envisage and then developed their own innovations within existing games. So-called game mods are working examples of POP where players have appropriated userfriendly tools, usually built into the game engines by the vendors (e.g. The Sims, World of Warcraft, etc.). Video games have joined other media (e.g. movie, novel, comic) in the new genre of transmedia storytelling (e.g. franchises such as Tomb Raider, The Matrix, Harry Potter), allowing the player to enter the story 'so far', extending it in the 'now', constructing their own individualised narratives and increasingly, with the capability to enhance and extend the realm of the game itself. These individual constructed game mods allow players to extend virtual realms and narratives in real-time, in directions often unforeseen by the game engine makers. Such activities are increasingly a part of an individual's entertainment and education. Game modding as described, and the engines and tools that enable it, are within the scope of POP.

Internet-based mashup tools (e.g. Google Wave) have opened up a second application front beyond game mods, where POP is likely to gain mass adoption and occasionally produce radical user innovation. The selection and orchestration of disparate distributed services (e.g. web services; information feeds; the Cloud) by an individual within a user-friendly toolkit or framework, is also in the scope of POP. While the formal protocols and the technical enactment of such specific services are of little interest here, the quality, access, usage, aggregation and orchestration of them by the individual themselves, into a personalised synergy of capability made available through some enacting technology, are of acute interest to POP. Modeling techniques and people-friendly notations that bridge and coordinate distributed services together with local resources within POP tools – ones that the layperson can understand and use in conceptualising their designs - encompasses another cross-discipline facet of POP.

RECOMMENDED TOPICS:

Topics to be discussed in this journal include (but are not limited to) the following:

* Activity theory and modeling
* Agent meta-models, mental models
* Alert filter and notification software, automated task assistance
* Augmented reality, augmented interaction
* Automating personal ontologies, personalised content generation
* Client-side conceptual modeling
* Computational models from psychology
* Context-aware systems, location-aware computing, ubiquitous computing
* Cultural probes, self-ethnography
* End-user composition, end-user multi-agent systems
* Game development support tools
* Game mods, game engines, open game engines
* Home network applications
* Human-centred software development
* Interface generators, XML-based UI notation generators
* Interface metaphors
* Life logs, life blogs, feed aggregators
* Mashups, mashup tools, cloud mashups
* Model-driven design, didactic models, model-based design and implementation
* New generation visual programming
* Personal interaction styles, touch and gestures
* People-Oriented Programming (POP)
* People-Oriented Programming case studies
* Personal ontologies and taxonomies
* Personalisation, individualisation, market of one
* Personas and actors
* Real-time narrative generation engines
* Role-based modeling
* Service science for individuals
* Situated computation, social proximity applications
* Smart-phone mashups, home network mashups, home media mashups
* Software analysis & design, software process modeling
* Software component selection
* Speech and natural language interfaces
* Storyboarding, scenarios, picture scenarios
* Task flow diagrams, Task-based design
* Task models, task analysis, cognitive task models, concurrent task modeling
* Use case models, user interface XML notations
* User-centered design, usage-centered design
* User interface tools, XML-based UI notations
* User modelling, end user programming, end user development
* Wearable computing, bodyware
* Web-service orchestration, web-service co-ordination

SUBMITTING TO IJPOP:
Prospective authors should note that only original and previously unpublished articles will be considered. INTERESTED AUTHORS MUST CONSULT THE JOURNAL’S GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS at:
http://www.igi-global.com/Files/AuthorEditor/guidelinessubmission.pdf

PRIOR TO SUBMISSION. All article submissions will be forwarded to at least three members of the Editorial Review Board of the journal for double-blind, peer review. Final decision regarding acceptance/revision/rejection will be based on the reviews received from the reviewers. All submissions must be forwarded electronically to: stevenbg AT unimelb.edu.au

All inquiries and submissions should be should be directed to the attention of:

Steve Goschnick
Co-Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of People-Oriented Programming
E-mail: stevenbg AT unimelb.edu.au
http://www.igi-global.com/IJPOP

Additional links:

Goschnick, S. (2009). People-Oriented Programming: from Agent-Oriented Analysis to the Design of Interactive Systems, In. J.A. Jacko (Ed.): Human-Computer Interaction, Part I, HCII 2009, LNCS 5610, pp. 836–845.

Career and Professionalism Zone at the Health Informatics Congress 2010 (HC2010)

FROM: Sinclair, Mike (South East Coast Strategic Health Authority)

Dear all,

During the very interesting and stimulating meeting on ICT & Society run by the Faculty of Health Informatics in mid December I advertised a Careers and Professionalism Zone that we are intending to hold at this year's Health Informatics Congress (HC2010).

The aim of this zone is to increase awareness of health informatics as a career prospect for budding new students looking for career options in ICT; and to provide careers advice and guidance to those already engaged in the profession.

We are aiming to provide tables for professional organisations, and for educational establishments, as well as some one-to-one meeting facilities for individual career guidance. There will be limited space available for stands, and they will not be elaborate (to cut down on cost) as we are holding this outside the main exhibition area.

We already have further and higher education bodies coming from Sussex (who are jointly organizing the zone) and from around the Birmingham area, but would like to extend an opportunity for other educational bodies to attend (as long as it is against the purpose outlined above.)

The event is at the ICC in Birmingham and will run from Tuesday April 27th to Thursday 29th.

I attach copy of (links provided here) programme and current exhibitors booked for information.

Costs for a stand/table would be between £200 and £400 (to be firmed up at the end of this month).

If you might be interested please let me know in the first instance.
Places will be offered on a first come first served basis.

Best regards,

Mike Sinclair, Chairman
Healthcare Informatics Congress 2010 (HC2010)
BCS Health
British Computer Society
mike.sinclair at bcs.org.uk
http://www.hcshowcase.org/

Scholarship for PhD/DBA in Development Informatics at University of Manchester

Here is a scholarship opportunity at the University of Manchester shared by Mr. Richard Heeks and Mr. Brian Nicholson, Directors of the Centre for Development Informatics:

The Centre for Development Informatics at the University of Manchester is seeking high-quality PhD and DBA candidates to research topics on ICTs/information systems and socio-economic development. Some scholarships are available for those starting in September 2010; deadline dates vary but many require application before end February or end March 2010.

My source: Community Informatics list

Additional links:

http://www.sed.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/postgraduate/research/areas/researchopportunities/

Sir Terry Pratchett: 34th Richard Dimbleby Lecture - Shaking Hands with Death

I watched Sir Terry Pratchett's Richard Dimbleby Lecture (I am not yet sure if this will be available on iPlayer?). The issues are already well recognised, much debated and provide a constant tap on the shoulder for us all:

Although the poll numbers are small
there is a definite shift afoot.

From the BBC:

One of the world's most popular authors gives the 34th Richard Dimbleby Lecture from the Royal College of Physicians in London.

Sir Terry Pratchett announced in 2007 that he had been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. In his keynote lecture, Shaking Hands with Death, he explores how modern society, confronted with an increasingly older population, many of whom will suffer from incurable illnesses, needs to redefine how it deals with death.

The acclaimed creator of the bestselling Discworld series, he is the first novelist to give the Richard Dimbleby Lecture. His books have sold more than 65 million copies and have been translated into 37 languages.

<->

I realised in listening to Sir Terry that although I usually apply socio-technical in an informatics context, the term is of course equally applicable to the debate surrounding assisted suicide, or assisted death as Sir Terry prefers to call it. The quality of (our social) life is lost in the beep, buzz, hum and scan of hyper-technical health care.

It is as if the technology of health care is producing relativistic effects. Instead of the travellers being explorers heading for stars at near the speed of light; they are travellers cast adrift within a long term chronic disease that cuts them off from time, place, person, those they love and - for Sir Terry - choice. ...

This debate will run on ...

Photo source: The Guardian

Your odds on favourite: Hodges' model

HAYDOCK PARK 3:00

The Hodges-Jones Classic Integrated, Holistic &
Multidisciplinary Care Chase

Going: heavy

26m 1.75f

4	REALPOLITIK	250	225
3	SOCIAL SHENANIGANS	33	25
1	INTERPERSONAL SKILLS	5	3	4
2	HARD SCIENCE	Evs	10-11	5-6	10-11	5-6
5	SPIRITUAL LEANINGS	75	50	45	50
6	SOCIO-TECH NEGLECT	750	1000

Additional links:
Gamblers Anonymous

Gam-Anon

Gambling Commission

Inspired by BBC News and living by Haydock Park Racecourse

Ref info:
http://www.ukhorseracing.co.uk/newtoracing/LiveBettingPricesOnTelevision.asp

Call for Papers for Special issue on Linking the Local with the Global within Community Informatics

Please forward as appropriate. Thanks!

Dear all, a special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics (http://ci-journal.net) will be devoted to ´Linking the Local with the Global within Community informatics`, guest-edited by Liisa Horelli and Doug Schuler.

The Journal of Community Informatics is a focal point for the communication of research of interest to a global network of academics, community informatics practitioners and national and multi-lateral policy makers. The field of community informatics seeks to explore the potentials of ICTs and their applications for economic, ecological and socio-cultural development efforts at the community level. It seeks to ensure that individuals and communities can take advantage of the opportunities that these technologies can provide.

For this special issue of the Journal, we are inviting submission of original, unpublished articles. We welcome research articles from different disciplines, case studies and notes from the field. All research articles will be double blind peer-reviewed. Insights and analytical perspectives from practitioners and policy makers in the form of notes from the field or case studies are also encouraged. These will not be peer-reviewed.

You can find the full Call for Papers below. Looking forward to hearing from you.
Warm wishes, Liisa and Doug

------------------------------------------

Journal of Community Informatics:

Call for Papers for Special issue on Linking the Local with the Global within Community Informatics

Guest editors: Liisa Horelli and Douglas Schuler

The Journal of Community Informatics (http://ci-journal.net) is a focal point for the communication of research of interest to a global network of academics, Community Informatics practitioners and national and multi-lateral policy makers.
We invite submissions of original, unpublished articles for a forthcoming special edition of the Journal that will focus on Linking the Local with the Global within Community Informatics. We welcome research articles from different disciplines, case studies and notes from the field. All research articles will be double blind peer-reviewed. Insights and analytical perspectives from practitioners and policy makers in the form of notes from the field or case studies are also encouraged. These will not be peer-reviewed.

What is Community Informatics?

Community informatics

...links economic and social development efforts at the community level with emerging opportunities in such areas as electronic commerce, community and civic networks and telecentres, electronic democracy and online-participation, self-help and virtual health communities, advocacy, cultural enhancement, and e-planning among others....is concerned with carving out a sphere and developing strategies for precisely those who are being excluded from this ongoing rush, and enabling these individuals and communities to take advantage of some of the opportunities which the technology is providing. It is also concerned with enhancing civil society and strengthening local communities for self-management and for environmental and economically sustainable development, ensuring that many who might otherwise be excluded are able to take advantage of the enormous opportunities the new technologies are presenting.

- Michael Gurstein in Community Informatics:
Enabling Communities with Information and Communications

Why a special issue on Linking Local with the Global within Community Informatics?

Community informatics (CI) is the study and practice of information and communication systems (especially involving networked digital systems) in the community. Regardless of the agreement on the broad definition, there are inherent tensions within the CI community and with the CI perspective itself. The "simple" idea of community is the source of one tension since there are a multiplicity of definitions and usages of the word "community", many of which are semantically loaded or ambiguous. Is, for example, a "virtual community" a real community?

Another source of tension is between the local and the global, the focus of this special issue. What's local and what's global? What is their significance in terms of our focus on "community"? How do we define the two terms so that they are meaningful and useful to our work? Perhaps these terms distract us from conceptualizing our enterprise in ways that are more useful? What characterizes phenomena or artifacts as belonging to one or the other (and how do they influence each other)? Interestingly, the community of community informatics researchers, practitioners, and activists itself is part of a new hybridity that blurs local and global.

The term glocalization has been coined to focus on the intermixing of local and global influences which are present and active everywhere. Although the phenomenon is not new, it has intensified in recent years due to the Internet, mass communications, mobile telephones, air travel, war, migration, economic interdependence, environmental impacts, and other aspects of 21st century mobilities. But identifying and naming a phenomenon is only the beginning. We must not mistake our use of a new term for understanding. For example, how would glocalization help us understand a network of local communities?

The availability of urban and community ICT could allow people to understand the larger impacts of their everyday decisions. It could also enable people to understand and promote not only the particularities of the local but also commonalities of the global, and to engage with the broader global “sphere”. Consequently, people could become actors who are engaged in the glocal networks of mobile people, goods and information.

However, glocal influence or interaction could be directed from the top-down, laterally, or from the bottom-up. CI implicitly embraces the tension between the local and the global. On some level, global and local pit two types of forces against each other. How does CI consider this clash or intermingling of forces? Does it advocate larger barriers, shelters, or hiding places, from these forces or does it inspire or promote the type of collective intelligence that goes beyond "using ICT?" The recent debate on the CI-research list brought up the idea that CI could be used, in addition to the benefit of communities, to the benefit of global communities. This debate raised arguments that both supported and questioned the claim. On the one hand, there is the risk that glocalisation can dilute (and downgrade) the "community" to some larger (and less individually significant) whole. In that case, it may be important to preserve the 'local' as it maintains the community's domains of control and power over the circumstances that impacts it. It can be reasoned that greater globality essentially removes self-control and self-governance.

On the other hand, glocalisation provides new strategic options for movements who seek resources and support far beyond national boundaries, such as the Chiapas, in Mexico. The global opportunities even begin to play part in the way local activists frame the issues they raise locally. Thus, the "outside world" affects communities, but communities exert forces outwards as well. Local communities can also share experiences and strategies, thus mutually strengthening each other. We need to figure out, how we are going to make the glocal or translocal connections work most effectively. This special issue is intended to help surface the opportunities, challenges, and risks around this theme.

These issues give rise to a large number of research questions. Some of these are listed below but there are many yet to be identified and researched. What processes underlie the forces of globalization? Which are forces of localization? How are people affected by each? How do these forces originate, diffuse, and make their effects felt? Do these forces affect all communities equally or are gender, ethnicity, or other features significant factors? And what should CI researchers / practitioners do in relation to those forces? Is the issue trying to help communities use ICT more effectively, or is it working in a general way to develop communication systems that will help local communities intelligently address the problems that they (and the rest of the world) face? In some situations, for example, this means helping to develop collective problem-solving tools so people can more effectively resist oppression or fight the status quo. Or should their inhabitants be full citizens of the world with the rights and responsibilities that accompany that status? How can we characterize the new diversity of global / local relationships? What patterns exist? In what ways might (hyper?) localism breed parochialism and isolationism? Can we embrace CI without unnecessarily valorizing the local community? What are the opportunities (and what should the limits be) to our research and activism on behalf of and with the local community?

Because CI is a brand new field of research and practice we have the rare opportunity to define our field. Is it useful — or even possible — to conceptualize a social enterprise that is relevant today without explicitly acknowledging climate change, environmental degradation, oppression, poverty, human rights, war and militarism, and other "global" problems that face us all, however indirectly. How should these manifest "global" concerns be factored into our enterprise? And how does the role of information and communication, the foundations of our enterprise, change — if at all — the way we answer these questions? This positioning of our enquiry at such a point should enable a new set of opportunities. CI integrates research and engagement. So its view of localism and globalism needs to be informed through those perspectives.

We invite authors to submit in English both full articles for peer-review, as well as short pieces on specific experiences and/or policy and regulatory issues, to be reviewed by the guest editors.

Please note the deadlines:
Deadline for abstracts: 28 February 2010
Deadline for submissions: 30 May 2010
Publication date is forthcoming

For information about submission requirements, including author guidelines, please visit:
http://www.ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

For further information, clarifications, comments or suggestions, and to send abstracts of papers for consideration, please contact:

Dr. Liisa Horelli Helsinki University of Technology Centre for Urban and Regional Studies liisa.horelli at tkk.fi
Douglas Schuler The Public Sphere Project and The Evergreen State College douglas@publicsphereproject.org

(many) Care Transitions and The Little '-' That Could

Some people looking at Hodges' model may believe that the model perpetuates the dichotomies of old:

Human --- Machine
Individual --- Group
Sick --- Healthy
Supply --- Demand
Home --- Hospital
Self care --- Nursing care

In the 1990s as a community mental health nurse I was involved with a group of general nurses looking at ways of improving:

• discharge planning
• continuity of care

These issues remain and with the dichotomies of care above we can see how Hodges' model can assist our thinking and planning about transition. Not just one transition, but several.

This past week I was fortunate to attend one of a series of workshops -
Delivering High Quality Health Care for All: Bringing the social and technical together for a joined-up approach to deliver supporting systems and technologies
10th/11th December 2009, Leeds, UK

Organised by the UK Faculty of Health Informatics and the BCS Socio-Technical Group

The event was very good, stimulating and challenging. In the closing debate the appeal of 'socio-technical' and how to market a much needed joined-up approach in health IT came down at one point to the difference between:

'socio-technical' and 'sociotechnical'

In trying to find an alternative title, the hyphen was lost, and whilst it is not a crucial issue - for me that hyphen represents the axes of Hodges' model. Hodges' model acts as a high level aide-mémoire and that little hyphen can perform the same trick. The hyphen reminds us of the differences. The dichotomies that need to be navigated and negotiated in our dialogues about care AND caring. These are most evident in transfers and transitions (after all - "getting out of bed is a risk").

There are mini and macro transitions. Care pathways are not yellow-bricked unbroken splines from cottage to cottage hospital. They should be tortured if they do reflect person-centered experiences and needs.

Some transitions are process laden and repetitive, such as drug administration and must be protected - free from interruption. Although grounded in a social exchange of (correct) identities: a registered nurse, the right patient, right drug, right dose, right duration and right time these can be framed within the SCIENCE domain. That is where (for me) the conventional 'drug round' can be found. Counselling is another transition (if effective it also moves people on). Counselling can be found in the INTRAPERSONAL domain - close to the border with SOCIOLOGY.

Other transitions and transfers are more involved:

• person's home to attend day care (for the first time!)
• person's home to residential home
• hospital ward to home
• home encounter with the crisis team
• telecare consultation
  
• ...

Care is constantly passed hence the need to write and record. Passed from -

person-to-person
team-to-team
team-to-carer
time-to-time
discipline-to-discipline
self-care

This is the outcome that is sought. Ultimately passing responsibility back to the individual and when applicable their family. Having formal integrated care pathways is one thing, but they are never truly continuous, clear and true. And as they say crossing bridges you may have to break step and surely different disciplines march to different tunes? Today though the most audible tune must be socio-technical. ...

Additional link: The Little Engine That Could

Image source:
Drug round tabard http://internet-workwear.co.uk/acatalog/Drug_Round_Tabard.html

Sheltered housing, care domains, ADLs, telecare and wardens

Shelter is a basic human need, one rendered acute when people are forced to flee their homeland. On a rather different level in the UK there is currently quite a debate about sheltered housing and the withdrawal of live-in wardens. This 'debate' has even progressed to judicial review.

I've visited many clients when the warden has appeared at the window or door to check that things are aok? Such has been the time keeping and client's faith in their clock that on occasion it could have been Kant walking by. It is often helpful to invest some time and get to know the warden, too see what they know not just about 'care of older adults', but about their residents many of whom become friends. We need to remember what a difference an individual can make in these situations. The clue is in the title 'sheltered housing' which in Hodges' model spans the interpersonal and sociology care domains. I've illustrated this below:

Suddenly, the advent of telecare, video and mobile comms and resulting benefits raise the possibility of service 'duplication' at a time when cost savings are sought in social care. Alternately, we might ask if some overlaps in service provision are good insurance? For the people in sheltered housing and their relatives what did sheltered mean to them when they first viewed the facility, what does it mean now? As is the case with day care centre managers, the more dynamic wardens really do make a difference to these communities of individuals. As Peter Sellers showed us sometimes for a gardener - or a warden - just Being There is reassurance enough.

Hodges' model can be used as a reflective device for this real-world bricks and mortar example of a clash between the humanistic and mechanistic care domains.

Additional link: International Human Rights Day 2009

Original dwelling image from: http://www.cherokeemedicineman.com/dwelling.html

Film image source IMDb

2nd iConference Workshop on Sociotechnical Systems

Workshop: “Keywords of the Sociotechnical”
Organizers:
Steven Jackson, University of Michigan;
David Ribes, Georgetown University;
Sean Goggins, Drexel University

We invite participation in the 2nd iConference Workshop on Sociotechnical systems, to be held prior to the iConference on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana-Champaign on February 3, 2010. To see “who we are”, check out the facebook group – “Researchers of the Sociotechnical” or our website at http://www.sociotech.net .

You may register here: https://www.ischools.org/conftool/

In 1975 British cultural historian Raymond Williams published his influential pocket dictionary Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. The text tackled the most difficult, contested and often under explored terms in his field: culture, agency, technology, etc. Today studies of sociotechnical systems finds itself at a place not unlike where British Cultural Studies was in the early 70s: a meeting place for scholars of multiple disciplinary backgrounds deploying concepts and tools whose commonality (and separateness) of meaning has yet to be fully established.

What are the words that transcend the sectional interests of, say, organizational science and HCI, CSCW and science and technology studies? When an HCI researcher and a social informatics scholar say ‘system’ or ‘design,’ are they really talking about the same thing? Relatedly, how do we go about attaching these keywords to concrete socio-technical research
problems in our diverse disciplinary traditions? How do we go about transforming a cross-field coincidence of research objects (Wikipedia, eScience, social practices in pervasive computing spaces, and countless others) into a mutually informed set of research problems?

This workshop will provide a venue to gather and discuss our intellectual traditions, research objects, and vocabularies in order to elaborate and clarify the keywords of the sociotechnical.

*Studying Sociotechnical Systems*

The workshop builds on and extends efforts that have included the 2008 & 2009 Summer Research Institute of the Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST). These Research Institutes, supported by the National Science Foundation and held at the University of Michigan (2008) and Syracuse University (2009), brought together a diverse set of researchers from fields as diverse as science and technology studies, human-computer interaction, management and organizational studies, library and information science, sociology, social informatics, and computer science, to begin exploring and framing a future research agenda centered on socio-technical research.

David Ribes, Ph.D.
Communication, Culture & Technology (CCT)
Georgetown University
http://davidribes.com

Additional links:

5th iConference 2010

The Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST) [and above image source]