This paper focusses on the work required to generate useful data. Currently , healthcare organizations across the globe are currently grappling to implement tools and practices to transform data from “refuse to riches”, and are under massive institutional pressures to make healthcare “data-driven” against the messy reality of creating, managing, analyzing, and using data for management, decision making, accountability, and medical research.
This paper provides a definition of data work, outlines its relevance in the current processes of datafication of healthcare, and in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd orders of data production. Finally, it provides an overview of the 13 papers that are part of the special issue on "Data work in Healthcare" in the Health Informatics Journal.