| An Admissibility-Based Operational Transformation Framework for Collaborative Editing Systems | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1-43 | |
| Du Li; Rui Li | |||
| Operational transformation (OT) as a consistency control method has been
well accepted in group editors. With OT, the users can edit any part of a
shared document at any time and local responsiveness is not sensitive to
communication latencies. However, established theoretical frameworks for
developing OT algorithms either require transformation functions to work in all
possible cases, which complicates the design of transformation functions, or
include an under-formalized condition of intention preservation, which results
in algorithms that cannot be formally proved and must be fixed over time to
address newly discovered counterexamples. To address those limitations, this
paper proposes an alternative framework, called admissibility-based
transformation (ABT), that is theoretically based on formalized, provable
correctness criteria and practically no longer requires transformation
functions to work under all conditions. Compared to previous approaches, ABT
simplifies the design and proofs of OT algorithms. Keywords: CSCW; collaboration; consistency control; group editor; operational
transformation | |||
| Mobile Technology and Action Teams: Assessing BlackBerry Use in Law Enforcement Units | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 45-71 | |
| Susan G. Straus; Tora K. Bikson; Edward Balkovich; John F. Pane | |||
| This research explores the effectiveness of mobile wireless information and
communication technologies (ICTs) for law enforcement teams. Law enforcement
teams require real-time information access and rapid communication to diagnose
potential threats, analyze problems, and coordinate actions. To meet these
needs, two U.S. law enforcement organizations implemented pilot trials of RIM
BlackBerries for approximately 650 squad members. These trials provided an
opportunity to assess acceptance, use, and perceived performance benefits of
the technology as well as factors influencing these outcomes. Data were
collected from semi-structured interviews, user surveys, and system logs.
Although the work teams and tasks were similar in the two organizations, the
outcomes, while generally positive, differed markedly, with much greater
acceptance and use in one organization versus the other. Results show how
technical factors, functionality, and implementation processes account for
these differences and illustrate how mobile wireless ICT can meet the unique
needs for information access and communication in investigative action teams.
We expect that these findings will generalize beyond action teams as more
mobile workers in a variety of domains adopt wireless handheld technologies. Keywords: action teams; BlackBerry; CSCW; email; information and communication
technology; law enforcement; mobile technology; technology acceptance;
technology adoption; wireless handheld | |||
| PeerCare: Supporting Awareness of Rhythms and Routines for Better Aging in Place | | BIBAK | DOI | 73-104 | |
| Yann Riche; Wendy Mackay | |||
| Caring for the elderly is becoming a key challenge for society, given the
shortage of trained personnel and the increased age of the population.
Innovative approaches are needed to help the elderly remain at home longer and
more safely, that is, to age in place. One popular strategy is to monitor the
activity of the elderly: this focuses on obtaining information for caregivers
rather than supporting the elderly directly. We propose an alternative, i.e. to
enhance their inter-personal communication. We report the results of a user
study with 14 independent elderly women and discuss the existing role that
communication plays in maintaining their independence and well-being. We
highlight the importance of peer support relationships, which we call PeerCare,
and how awareness of each other's rhythms and routines helps them to stay in
touch. We then describe the deployment of a technology probe, called
markerClock, which a pair of elderly friends used to improve their awareness of
each other's rhythms and routines. We conclude with a discussion of how such
communication appliances enhance the awareness of rhythms and routines among
elderly peers and can improve their quality of life and provide safer and more
satisfying aging in place. Keywords: aging in place; awareness; computer-mediated communication; communication
appliances; elderly; markerClock; PeerCare; rhythms; routines; technology
probes | |||
| Context-Based Workplace Awareness: Concepts and Technologies for Supporting Distributed Awareness in a Hospital Environment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 105-138 | |
| Jakob E. Bardram; Thomas R. Hansen | |||
| Maintaining an awareness of the working context of fellow co-workers is
crucial to successful cooperation in a workplace. For mobile, non co-located
workers, however, such workplace awareness is hard to maintain. This paper
investigates how context-aware computing can be used to facilitate workplace
awareness. In particular, we present the concept of Context-Based Workplace
Awareness, which is derived from years of in-depth studies of hospital work and
the design of computer supported cooperative work technologies to support the
distributed collaboration and coordination of clinical work within large
hospitals. This empirical background has revealed that an awareness especially
of the social, spatial, temporal, and activity context plays a crucial role in
the coordination of work in hospitals. The paper then presents and discusses
technologies designed to support context-based workplace awareness, namely the
AWARE architecture, and the AwarePhone and AwareMedia applications. Based on
almost 2 year' deployment of the technologies in a large hospital, the paper
discuss how the four dimension of context-based workplace awareness play out in
the coordination of clinical work. Keywords: social awareness; context-aware computing; mobile computing; hospitals;
pervasive healthcare; AwarePhone; AwareMedia | |||
| Technology Effects in Distributed Team Coordination -- High-Interdependency Tasks in Offshore Oil Production | | BIBAK | DOI | 139-173 | |
| Petra Saskia Bayerl; Kristina Lauche | |||
| For highly interdependent yet location-specific tasks, distributed teams
need to closely coordinate activities and processes. This field study in the
upstream oil and gas industry focused on challenges in the coordination of
highly interdependent tasks if teams work remotely on an ongoing basis. Based
on 78 semi-structured interviews and observations over a period of 12 months,
we identified coordination requirements for primary team activities, as well as
effects of changing media capabilities to overcome difficulties of ongoing
distribution. Implications for media requirements in the support of ongoing
distributed teams are discussed. Keywords: computer-mediated communication; coordination; distributed teams; task
interdependency | |||
| The Dynamics of Material Artifacts in Collaborative Research Teams | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 175-199 | |
| Deana D. Pennington | |||
| Boundary objects are material artifacts that mediate the relationship
between two or more disparate perspectives. The concept of boundary objects has
been demonstrably useful in a variety of research areas; however, the meaning
and function of boundary objects is contested. At issue is the relationship
between boundary objects that negotiate between perspectives and those that
specify across perspectives. In this study the changing nature of boundary
objects in cooperative work is related to the dynamics of evolving problem
conceptualization, system design, and enactment within cooperative work
settings. Design based research on material artifacts produced by an incipient
cross-disciplinary research team during their efforts towards negotiating
integrated conceptualizations and specifying shared research agendas is used to
generate a more comprehensive model of boundary objects through the life of a
project. Keywords: eScience; eResearch; cross-disciplinary collaboration; boundary objects;
material artifacts; design based research | |||
| Knowing the Way. Managing Epistemic Topologies in Virtual Game Worlds | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 201-230 | |
| Ulrika Bennerstedt; Jonas Ivarsson | |||
| This is a study of interaction in massively multiplayer online games. The
general interest concerns how action is coordinated in practices that neither
rely on the use of talk-in-interaction nor on a socially present living body.
For the participants studied, the use of text typed chat and the largely
underexplored domain of virtual actions remain as materials on which to build
consecutive action. How, then, members of these games can and do collaborate,
in spite of such apparent interactional deprivation, are the topics of the
study. More specifically, it addresses the situated practices that participants
rely on in order to monitor other players' conduct, and through which online
actions become recognizable as specific actions with implications for the
further achievement of the collaborative events. The analysis shows that these
practices share the common phenomenon of projections. As an interactional
phenomenon, projection of the next action has been extensively studied. In
relation to previous research, this study shows that the projection of a next
action can be construed with resources that do not build on turns-at-talk or on
actions immediately stemming from the physical body -- in the domain of online
games, players project activity shifts by means of completely different
resources. This observation further suggests that projection should be possible
through the reconfiguration of any material, on condition that those
reconfigurations and materials are recurrent aspects of some established
practice. Keywords: conversation analysis; collaborative gaming; coordinated action;
ethnomethodology; gameplay; massively multiplayer online game; projectability;
recognizability; virtual action | |||
| Sociotechnical Studies of Cyberinfrastructure and e-Research: Current Themes and Future Trajectories | | BIBA | Full-Text | 231-244 | |
| David Ribes; Charlotte P. Lee | |||
| Dedication. We dedicate this special issue to the memory of Susan Leigh Star. The influence of her work, and particularly her conceptualization of infrastructure, has been very influential in this growing research area. Almost all of the articles in this special issue cite her work or cite other works that were influenced by her own. Less apparent to others but strongly present in our lives was Leigh's role as a mentor, colleague and inspiration as she fostered the study of infrastructure. Her pioneering work demonstrated the important role of embedded social scientists that subsequently created openings to the field sites and funding sources that made much of this research possible. Leigh, you will be greatly missed. | |||
| Synergizing in Cyberinfrastructure Development | | BIBAK | DOI | 245-281 | |
| Matthew J. Bietz; Eric P. S. Baumer; Charlotte P. Lee | |||
| This paper investigates the work of creating infrastructure, using as a case
study the development of cyberinfrastructure for metagenomics research.
Specifically, the analysis focuses on the role of embeddedness in
infrastructure development. We expand on the notion of human infrastructure to
develop the concepts of synergizing, leveraging, and aligning, which denote the
active processes of creating and managing relationships among people,
organizations, and technologies in the creation of cyberinfrastructure. This
conceptual lens highlights how embeddedness is not only an important result of
infrastructure development, but is also a precursor that can act as both a
constraint and a resource for development activities. Keywords: Cyberinfrastructure; Synergizing; Leveraging; Aligning; Infrastructure;
Metagenomics | |||
| The Dialectical Tensions in the Funding Infrastructure of Cyberinfrastructure | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 283-308 | |
| Kerk F. Kee; Larry D. Browning | |||
| This article focuses on funding for cyberinfrastructure and how funding
affects the cyberinfrastructure foundation laid, who completes the work, and
what the outcomes of the funding are. By following qualitative procedures and
thematic analysis, we identify five dialectical tensions across three
difference levels of institutions, individuals, and ideologies in the funding
infrastructure of cyberinfrastructure. Through an organizational communication
lens, we define funding infrastructure as the communication arrangements of
institutions, individuals, and ideologies that must be coordinated in order for
cyberinfrastructure to be brought into existence. These communication
arrangements include salient motivations of and financial compensations for
individuals who engage in them. They also comprise explicit policies about
funding, as well as implicit ideologies about science embedded in funding, as
held by institutions involved in these communication arrangements. Keywords: cyberinfrastructure; dialectical tensions; funding infrastructure;
organizational communication | |||
| Transforming Scholarly Practice: Embedding Technological Interventions to Support the Collaborative Analysis of Ancient Texts | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 309-334 | |
| Grace de la Flor; Marina Jirotka; Paul Luff; John Pybus; Ruth Kirkham | |||
| e-Research and Cyberinfrastructure programmes actively promote the
development of new forms of scientific practice and collaboration through the
implementation of tools and technologies that support distributed collaborative
work across geographically dispersed research institutes and laboratories.
Whilst originating in scientific domains, we have more recently seen a turn to
the design of systems that support research practices in the social sciences
and the arts and humanities. Attempts to embed large-scale infrastructures into
research settings has brought to the fore the necessity of understanding the
knowledge, skills and practices of researchers within a variety of disciplines
that might use these technologies. In this paper, we consider an approach to
gathering requirements through the introduction of various technical
interventions for relatively short term periods so that we may come to an
understanding their impact on routine work practices. Drawing upon an analysis
of the detailed ways in which classicists work with digital images, we discuss
the requirements for systems that support them as they collaborate in the
interpretation of particular types of images. We discuss implications for the
development of infrastructures to support research collaboration in this area
and conclude with reflections upon the experiences gained from conducting
naturalistic studies in parallel with design interventions. Keywords: e-science; e-research; cyberinfrastructure; workplace studies; digital
humanities; requirements engineering | |||
| Reconfiguring Evidence: Interacting with Digital Objects in Scientific Practice | | BIBAK | DOI | 335-354 | |
| Marko Monteiro | |||
| This paper analyzes how scientists working in a multidisciplinary team
produce scientific evidence through building and manipulating scientific
visualizations. The research is based on ethnographic observations of
scientists' weekly work meetings and the observation of videotapes of these
meetings. The scientists observed work with advanced imaging technologies to
produce a 4D computer model of heat transfer in human prostate tissues. The
idea of 'digital objects' is proposed in order to conceptually locate their
'materiality', observed in the practices of producing evidence through the
handling of three-dimensional renderings of data. The manipulation of digital
objects seeks to establish meaningful differences between parameters of
interest, both when building and when analyzing them. These digital objects are
dealt with as part of the empirical evidence used in the course of practices of
visualizing and modeling natural phenomena. This process, which can be
contextualized historically in terms of the development of imaging
technologies, becomes crucial in understanding what counts as empirical
evidence in current scientific work. Keywords: cyberinfrastructures; ethnography; modeling; prostate cancer; representation
in science; scientific visualization; STS | |||
| Reusing Scientific Data: How Earthquake Engineering Researchers Assess the Reusability of Colleagues' Data | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 355-375 | |
| Ixchel M. Faniel; Trond E. Jacobsen | |||
| Investments in cyberinfrastructure and e-Science initiatives are motivated
by the desire to accelerate scientific discovery. Always viewed as a foundation
of science, data sharing is appropriately seen as critical to the success of
such initiatives, but new technologies supporting increasingly data-intensive
and collaborative science raise significant challenges and opportunities.
Overcoming the technical and social challenges to broader data sharing is a
common and important research objective, but increasing the supply and
accessibility of scientific data is no guarantee data will be applied by
scientists. Before reusing data created by others, scientists need to assess
the data's relevance, they seek confidence the data can be understood, and they
must trust the data. Using interview data from earthquake engineering
researchers affiliated with the George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake
Engineering Simulation (NEES), we examine how these scientists assess the
reusability of colleagues' experimental data for model validation. Keywords: data reuse; data sharing; data quality; trust; scientific data collections;
data repositories; e-Science; cyberinfrastructure | |||
| Infrastructure Time: Long-term Matters in Collaborative Development | | BIBAK | DOI | 377-415 | |
| Helena Karasti; Karen S. Baker; Florence Millerand | |||
| This paper addresses the collaborative development of information
infrastructure for supporting data-rich scientific collaboration. Studying
infrastructure development empirically not only in terms of spatial issues but
also, and equally importantly, temporal ones, we illustrate how the long-term
matters. Our case is about the collaborative development of a metadata standard
for an ecological research domain. It is a complex example where standards are
recognized as one element of infrastructure and standard-making efforts include
integration of semantic work and software tools development. With a focus on
the temporal scales of short-term and long-term, we analyze the practices and
views of the main parties involved in the development of the standard. Our
contributions are three-fold: 1) extension of the notion of infrastructure to
more explicitly include the temporal dimension; 2) identification of two
distinct temporal orientations in information infrastructure development work,
namely 'project time' and 'infrastructure time', and 3) association of related
development orientations, particularly 'continuing design' as a development
orientation that recognizes 'infrastructure time'. We conclude by highlighting
the need to enrich understandings of temporality in CSCW, particularly towards
longer time scales and more diversified temporal hybrids in collaborative
infrastructure development. This work draws attention to the manifold
ramifications that 'infrastructure time', as an example of more extended
temporal scales, suggests for CSCW and e-Research infrastructures. Keywords: Collaborative information infrastructure development; Continuing design;
Cyberinfrastructure, e-Infrastructure, e-Research, e-Science; Development
orientation; Long-Term Ecological Research; Metadata standard; Standard-making;
Temporal orientation; Temporal scale; Time research | |||
| Susan Leigh Star -- in memoriam | | BIB | DOI | 417 | |
| Kjeld Schmidt | |||
| Collaboration on Social Network Sites: Amateurs, Professionals and Celebrities | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 419-455 | |
| Bernd Ploderer; Steve Howard; Peter Thomas | |||
| Amateurs are found in arts, sports, or entertainment, where they are linked
with professional counterparts and inspired by celebrities. Despite the growing
number of CSCW studies in amateur and professional domains, little is known
about how technologies facilitate collaboration between these groups. Drawing
from a 1.5-year field study in the domain of bodybuilding, this paper describes
the collaboration between and within amateurs, professionals, and celebrities
on social network sites. Social network sites help individuals to improve their
performance in competitions, extend their support network, and gain recognition
for their achievements. The findings show that amateurs benefit the most from
online collaboration, whereas collaboration shifts from social network sites to
offline settings as individuals develop further in their professional careers.
This shift from online to offline settings constitutes a novel finding, which
extends previous work on social network sites that has looked at groups of
amateurs and professionals in isolation. As a contribution to practice, we
highlight design factors that address this shift to offline settings and foster
collaboration between and within groups. Keywords: amateurs; bodybuilding; career; celebrities; collaboration; community;
leisure; passion; professionals; social network sites | |||
| Knowledge Management in Locating the Patient in an Emergency Medical Service in Italy | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 457-481 | |
| Fabio Dovigo; Ilaria Redaelli | |||
| This study examines an Emergency Medical Service in order to analyze the
composite set of activities and instruments directed at locating the patient.
The good management of information about the location of the emergency is
highly relevant for a reliable rescue service, but this information depends on
knowledge of the territory that is socially distributed between EMS operators
and callers. Accordingly, the decision-making process often has to go beyond
the emergency service protocols, engaging the operator in undertaking an open
negotiation in order to transform the caller's role from layman to "co-worker".
The patient's location turns out to be an emerging phenomenon, collaborative
work based on knowledge management involving two communities -- the callers and
the EMS operators -- that overlap partially. Drawing examples from emergency
calls, the study analyzes the practice of locating a patient as a complex and
multi-layered process, highlighting the role played by new and old technologies
(the information system and the paper maps) in this activity. We argue that
CSCW technologies enable the blended use of different kinds of instruments and
support an original interconnection between the professional localization
systems and the public's way of defining a position. Keywords: control room; emergency calls; ethnography; ethnomethodology; knowledge
management; technology blending | |||
| Collaboration Within Different Settings: A Study of Co-located and Distributed Multidisciplinary Medical Team Meetings | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 483-513 | |
| Toni Robertson; Jane Li; Kenton O'Hara; Susan Hansen | |||
| This paper reports our findings from a study of multidisciplinary team
meetings for the treatment and ongoing management of breast cancer patients.
The focus of the fieldwork was the meetings within and between a large group of
multidisciplinary health professionals from two hospitals in Sydney, a large
public teaching hospital and a much smaller private hospital. The paper
examines the common work of the meetings and the variation within and between
local practices and sites in the doing of this work, both in the local settings
of each hospital and in the video-mediated setting when the local meetings are
linked. Variations in the physical setup of the meetings, the presentation of
the patient cases and the preparation of images used in patient discussion are
identified, traced to their various sources and examined within their
particular sociotechnical context. This is followed by a discussion of how
local variation contributed to the particular challenges of the video-mediated
meetings as experienced by the participants and how they might be addressed.
Our motivations are to contribute both to the growing case studies of
multidisciplinary team meetings within healthcare settings and to the important
work being done to generate conceptual and design approaches that can support
the development and successful use of CSCW technologies across highly variable
local settings. Keywords: cooperative work practices; health care; health informatics; local
practices; local variation; multidiscipinary team meetings; settings for
collaboration; shared images; video-mediated meetings | |||
| My Life as a Night Elf Priest. An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft. Bonnie Nardi 2010. The University of Michigan Press. (pp. 236). ISBN 978-0-472-02671-5 | | BIB | DOI | 515-518 | |
| Stefano De Paoli | |||
| Information Infrastructures for Health Care: Connecting Practices Across Institutional and Professional Boundaries | | BIB | DOI | 519-520 | |
| Jørgen P. Bansler; Finn Kensing | |||
| e-Infrastructures: How Do We Know and Understand Them? Strategic Ethnography and the Biography of Artefacts | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 521-556 | |
| Neil Pollock; Robin Williams | |||
| In health research and services, and in many other domains, we note the
emergence of large-scale information systems intended for long-term use with
multiple users and uses. These e-infrastructures are becoming more widespread
and pervasive and, by enabling effective sharing of information and
coordination of activities between diverse, dispersed groups, are expected to
transform knowledge-based work. Social scientists have sought to analyse the
significance of these systems and the processes by which they are created. Much
current attention has been drawn to the often-problematic experience of those
attempting to establish them. By contrast, this paper is inspired by concerns
about the theoretical and methodological weakness of many studies of technology
and work organisation -- particularly the dominance of relatively short-term,
often single site studies of technology implementation. These weaknesses are
particularly acute in relation to the analysis of infrastructural technologies.
We explore the relevance to such analysis of recent developments in what we
call the Biography of Artefacts (BoA) perspective -- which emphasises the value
of strategic ethnography: theoretically-informed, multi-site and longitudinal
studies: We seek to draw insights here from a programme of empirical research
into the long-term evolution of corporate e-infrastructures (reflected in
current Enterprise Resource Planning systems) and review some new conceptual
tools arising from recent research into e-Infrastructures (e-Is). These are
particularly relevant to understanding the current and ongoing difficulties
encountered in attempts to develop large-scale Health Infrastructures. Keywords: e-infrastructures; Biography of artefacts (BoA) approach; Strategic
ethnography; Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems; Health infrastructures | |||
| The Role of Integration in Health-Based Information Infrastructures | | BIBAK | DOI | 557-584 | |
| Gunnar Ellingsen; Kristoffer Røed | |||
| In this paper, we contribute with empirical insight into the complexity of
establishing and sustaining integration between different information
infrastructures in health care. An overall concern is to elaborate on how,
despite many obstacles, the integration effort moves forward. We see this as a
collective achievement, where users have an essential role in terms of
mobilizing and coordinating the other actors as well as maintaining the
integration. These activities are not limited to a specific project; they
emerge from and are part of day-to-day practice. Empirically, we focus on a
large integration initiative between the laboratory systems at the University
Hospital of Northern Norway and the electronic patient records used by general
practitioners in the Northern health region. Together with the vendor, Well
Diagnostics, the hospital initiated a project aimed at establishing a new
laboratory requisition system that enabled GPs to send requisitions
electronically to the hospital laboratories. Theoretically, we draw on the
concept of information infrastructures, and supplement this with Actor Network
Theory. Keywords: integration; information infrastructures; healthcare; laboratory
requisitions; negotiation; transformation; users | |||
| Prescriptions, X-rays and Grocery Lists. Designing a Personal Health Record to Support (The Invisible Work Of) Health Information Management in the Household | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 585-613 | |
| Enrico Maria Piras; Alberto Zanutto | |||
| For many years the introduction of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in
medical practice has been considered the best way to provide efficient document
sharing among different organizational settings. The actual results of these
technologies, though, do not seem to have matched expectations. The issue of
document sharing has been lately readdressed by proposing the creation of
patient-controlled information and communication technologies, Personal Health
Records (PHRs), providing laypeople the tools to access, manage and share their
health information electronically by connecting to the existing EHRs and other
institutional information systems. In this scenario, patients are called to
play a major role in coordinating healthcare professionals by providing them
the information they need. From a CSCW perspective the PHR offers an
interesting case to reflect on cooperative work that requires new
infrastructures that intersect organizational settings and extend into domestic
environments. So far though, there has not been enough research to shed light
on the self-care activities carried out in the households and how these
integrate with the organizational practices of doctors and institutions. Our
analyses show that health record keeping is an articulation work necessary for
meetings with doctors to proceed smoothly. To do so, people integrate the
information contained in medical documents by working on them with annotations,
underlinings and integrations. Moreover, we show that health record keeping is
a spatialized activity that is inextricably interwoven with the everyday
routine and objects. Finally, we provide a tentative classification of three
different strategies laypeople use to sort out health records: minimum effort,
adaptive, networking. Keywords: Personal health record; Healthcare infrastructures; Health record
management; Invisible work; Self-care; Qualitative research; Electronic health
record | |||
| Infrastructuring and Ordering Devices in Health Care: Medication Plans and Practices on a Hospital Ward | | BIBAK | DOI | 615-637 | |
| Claus Bossen; Randi Markussen | |||
| In this paper, we analyse physicians' and nurses' practices of prescribing
and administering medication through the use of paper-based, and digitalized
medication plans. Our point of departure is an ethnographic study of the
implications of upgrading an electronic medication module (EMM) that is part of
an electronic health record (EHR), carried out at an endocrinology department.
The upgrade led to a temporary breakdown of the EMM, and a return to
paper-based medication plans. The breakdown made visible and noticeable the
taken-for-granted capabilities of medication plans in their paper-based and
digital versions, and the distribution of functionalities between medication
plans and clinicians. We see the case as an opportunity to analyse
infrastructuring in health care, the process by which medical practices and
artefacts become parts of social and technological networks with longer reaches
and more channels through which coordination among distributed actors is
enabled and formed. In this case, infrastructuring means an extended scope and
intensity of the coordinative capabilities of medication plans, and an
increased vulnerability to, and dependency on events outside the immediate loci
of interaction. We particularly note the capacity of the EMM to facilitate
different kinds of ordering of information and practices, and propose the
conceptualizing of such digitalized artefacts as 'ordering devices'. Ordering
devices order information, stipulate action, and coordinate interaction across
and within social worlds, and achieve this through the flexible support of
different kinds of ordering. Keywords: computerized physician order entry; electronic patient records; electronic
medication module; ethnography; health care; hospitals; information
infrastructures; infrastructuring; ordering; ordering devices | |||