Infrastructures on Health Care: Connection Practices Across Institutional and Professional Boundaries Call for Papers
Call for Papers: Infrastructures for Health Care, June 18-19, 2009
Second International Workshop
**
*Infrastructures for Health Care: Connecting practices across
institutional and professional boundaries*
June 18-19, 2009, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
*Scope*
The first international workshop: Infrastructures for Health Care was
held at the Technical University of Denmark in June 2006. It attracted
researchers, health care professionals, IT professionals,
administrators, and others engaged in the development of infrastructures
and new, integrated applications and services for improving the quality
of health care services.
The purpose of this second international workshop is to continue this
forum for discussing current issues and trends related to the
integration and coordination of health care practices across
institutional, organizational, and professional boundaries.
The health care sector is characterized by a worsening shortage of
personnel and endlessly growing costs caused by the development of new
treatments in combination with rising demands for treatment, which are
associated with an aging population and an increase in chronic diseases.
Against this backdrop, policy makers, health care professionals and
researchers show an increased interest in innovative systems of care,
which improve communication, coordination and collaboration among
patients/citizens, care providers in primary care and specialty services
(clinics, hospitals, emergency departments, old people's homes etc.).
Concepts like shared care, integrated care and continuity of care are
indicative of ambitions of creating coherent and effective health care
services for patients that require complex - and often long-term - care.
Although these concepts are often used in relation to projects that seek
to enhance communication, coordination, and collaboration around
particular patient groups, they also have bearing on more general
visions of reorganizing health care.
Infrastructural arrangements - such as electronic patient records,
classification schemes, accounting systems, communication standards, and
quality systems - play a crucial role in these new models of care, and
it is increasingly hard to imagine integrative initiatives that do not
have a strong IT component. This raises a multitude of questions about
the - actual and imagined - role and impact of IT and other
infrastructure components in the development of patient-oriented,
integrated healthcare services.
We wish to highlight how new infrastructures - socio-technical
assemblages - simultaneously connect existing practices, influence and
change these practices, and create entirely new practices in health care
work (e.g. related to the maintenance of the infrastructure itself).
What characterizes infrastructures in health care? What role do they
play in transforming and reorganizing health care and in creating new
actors in health care? How are infrastructures established and
maintained? What is the impact on work practices, organizational
structures, cost effectiveness, quality of care, etc.?
*Topics of Interest*
Our aim is to bring together researchers, health care professionals, IT
professionals, administrators and others involved in establishing
infrastructures and/or developing new, integrated models of healthcare.
We seek practical case studies as well as empirical and theoretical
research contributions. Topics of particular interest include, but are
not limited to the following:
* Infrastructures as socio-technical achievement in health care
* Health care organizations and infrastructures
* Infrastructures and new patient practices
* Designing infrastructures for health care
* Economic aspects of infrastructures for health care
* Myths of infrastructures
* Infrastructures and politics
* Managing infrastructures
We encourage potential participants to submit an abstract (3-500 words)
describing the contribution before March 1, 2009. Abstracts must be
submitted by email to:
After the conference, a selection of the contributors will be invited to
submit a full paper to an edited - and fully reviewed - book or special
issue (to be decided).
*List of important dates*
Submission of abstracts 1st of March 2009
Notification of acceptance 1st of April 2009
Deadline for registration 15th of May 2009
Conference 18th - 19th of June 2009
*Workshop Co-Chairs*
Finn Kensing, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
J√∏rgen P. Bansler, Technical University of Denmark
*Program committee*
Stig Kjær Andersen, Aalborg University
Roland Bal, Erasmus University, Rotterdam
Ole Hanseth, Oslo University
Mark Hartswood, University of Edinburgh
Brit Ross Winthereik, IT University of Copenhagen
Margit Kristensen, √Örhus University
Henriette Langstrup, University of Copenhagen
Eric Monteiro, Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Jesper Simonsen, University of Roskilde
Ina Wagner, Vienna University of Technology
For abstract submission and further information, contact
infrastructures2009@sundhedsITnet.dk
