School of Communication and Culture

TY - JOUR

T1 - Data-work and friction: Investigating the practices of repurposing healthcare data

AU - Bonde, Morten

AU - Bossen, Claus

AU - Danholt, Peter

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - The focus on digital data for improved management and quality of healthcare is paramount. In particular, the vast volumes of accumulated data in clinical systems have created high hopes for repurposing data to serve secondary purposes beyond the practices of direct clinical care, such as research, improvement and efficiency. This article contributes with an understanding of the pivotal, but often unnoticed “data-work” involved in such efforts. The article is based on a regional project in Danish healthcare, in which nine hospital departments were given the task of developing new indicators for quality to substitute the previous accountability regime based on Diagnosis-Related Groups. Using the concept of “friction,” we analyze the challenges of turning clinical ideas into data-supported indicators and of collecting data from existing repositories. Especially, we turn attention to the interaction between clinicians and it-personnel to focus on the interdisciplinary and collaborative aspects of this work.

AB - The focus on digital data for improved management and quality of healthcare is paramount. In particular, the vast volumes of accumulated data in clinical systems have created high hopes for repurposing data to serve secondary purposes beyond the practices of direct clinical care, such as research, improvement and efficiency. This article contributes with an understanding of the pivotal, but often unnoticed “data-work” involved in such efforts. The article is based on a regional project in Danish healthcare, in which nine hospital departments were given the task of developing new indicators for quality to substitute the previous accountability regime based on Diagnosis-Related Groups. Using the concept of “friction,” we analyze the challenges of turning clinical ideas into data-supported indicators and of collecting data from existing repositories. Especially, we turn attention to the interaction between clinicians and it-personnel to focus on the interdisciplinary and collaborative aspects of this work.

KW - data-driven healthcare

KW - data-work

KW - ethnography

KW - healthcare infrastructures

KW - indicators

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85068234742&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/1460458219856462

DO - 10.1177/1460458219856462

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 31230506

VL - 25

SP - 558

EP - 566

JO - Health Informatics Journal

JF - Health Informatics Journal

SN - 1460-4582

IS - 3

ER -