Digital Health Work

 

As the use of digital health technologies grows, gaps between the potential of new technologies, existing healthcare practices, and workers’ preparedness for new technologies limit the potential of digital health to achieve acceptance and effective utilization at scale. The healthcare industry is the largest employer in the US, but plagued by inequities dividing specialized/technical from support roles. We view inclusion as a key driver of scale in future technology-facilitated healthcare work. Inclusive technology for healthcare work will enable workers in diverse roles and with different skills to leverage increasing access to data-intensive technologies. 

 

Our approach centers on alleviating existing misalignment between current healthcare work and data-intensive technologies in three ways. First is through the co-development of tools and generalizable design principles with users that lower the barrier to technology integration for healthcare workers. Second is by empowering individuals within healthcare systems who have diverse roles to adopt and use the tools and improve their skills. Third is to enable patient-centered healthcare that promotes autonomy and strengthens clinician-patient interactions. This initiative brings together researchers and practitioners in several scientific fields, including human-computer interaction, health informatics, artificial intelligence (AI), sensing, medicine, organizational behavior, and research on diversity and inclusion.