Project

Summary

The CITH project will design, develop and test IT applications and services to help healthcare professionals and patients with ICDs (advanced pacemakers) get an overview of the patient’s condition for timely and adequate intervention. CITH is a collaboration between the University of Copenhagen, the Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen Business School, the IT University of Copenhagen and Rigshospitalet.

The project focuses on the treatment of patients with ICDs at The Heart Centre at Rigshospitalet with the overall goal of improving both the communication and collaboration between all involved parties. This will improve the quality of life of patients as well as the quality and efficiency of treatment and care plans.

The project starts by examining the feasibility of an existing ICD telemonitoring system at The Heart Centre. The findings will then be used to develop – through iterative prototyping – IT-applications and –services to support communication and collaboration across organizational and professional boundaries, and among staff and patients.

Designing for Shared Care

CITH will address the problems of shared care and IT support for communication across institutional and professional boundaries in heterogeneous settings of healthcare professionals and patients, and will advance the conceptual and practical understanding of how to model, develop, and implement Socio-Technical IT solutions for communication and cooperation within heterogeneous and distributed work settings.

The project draws on results from Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Participatory Design (PD) studies. However, the project transcends these studies by also focusing on inter-organizational communication and collaboration.

Prototyping

CITH will examine an existing ICD telemonitoring system and iteratively develop prototypes aiming at meeting the shortcomings that are found.

Applications and Services

These prototypes are IT-applications and –services that support communication and collaboration across organizational and professional boundaries. The project will address the problem of supporting communication across institutional and professional boundaries in heterogeneous settings of healthcare professionals and patients.

This will contribute to the implementation of Danish health authorities and healthcare providers’ strategies by developing and testing effective and innovative Socio-Technical solutions for telemonitoring and shared care in a clinical context, thereby improving the quality of life of patients and increase the quality and efficiency of treatment and care plans.

CITH will advance the conceptual and practical understanding of how to model, develop, and implement Socio-Technical IT solutions for communication and cooperation within heterogeneous and distributed work settings – transcending institutional and professional boundaries. The project will build on and expand a multidisciplinary and cross-institutional research program in the Copenhagen area, HealthcareIT, that since 2004 have focused on IT and healthcare through a series of research and evaluation projects with the sector and its IT providers.