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SUMMARY:Techno fixes in health care settings? - Catherine Pope\, Professor
  of Medical Sociology\, School of Health Sciences\, University of Southamp
 ton
DTSTART:20100907T113000Z
DTEND:20100907T130000Z
UID:TALK22334@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jane Fleming
DESCRIPTION:Abstract\n\nInformation and communication technologies (ICT) a
 re often held up as a ‘techno fix’ for the problems facing healthcare 
 organizations. Computer decision support systems (CDSS)\, in particular\, 
 claim to make decision-making faster\, more accurate\, efficient\, and saf
 er. They offer opportunities to change the nature of the work and the conf
 iguration of the workforce and\, in the healthcare setting they may also s
 peak to the evidence based practice agendas which dominate much policy thi
 nking. This paper reports an ongoing project examining a CDSS deployed in 
 different healthcare environments. We are combining ethnography and survey
  methods to describe the development and use of a single CDSS in urgent an
 d emergency care. We are drawing on the Normalisation Process Theory (May\
 , Finch et al) to provide a systematic theoretical framework for our analy
 sis and augmenting this with insights from science and technology studies 
 and the sociology of work and organizations. Our findings directly challen
 ge the techno fix argument and point to the development and maintenance of
  user expertise\, and the highly contingent and continual evolution of bot
 h the CDSS and healthcare work.  \n\nSpeaker Biography\n\nCatherine Pope i
 s Professor of medical sociology in the Faculty of Health Sciences\, Unive
 rsity of Southampton. She has been doing and thinking about qualitative re
 search for nearly twenty years. Her substantive research focuses on the or
 ganization and delivery of care and the sociology of professional practice
 . Current funded projects include a study of the everyday use of a compute
 r decision support system\, an ethnography about how handover communicatio
 n really works in the ambulance service\, and possible extensions to the s
 ervice provided by NHS Direct. She has recently begun an exciting collabor
 ation with computer scientists to explore how sociology might contribute t
 o web science which is forcing her to learn more about web and computer te
 chnologies.
LOCATION:Large Seminar Room\, Institute of Public Health\, Forvie Site\, R
 obinson Way\, Cambridge CB2 0SR
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