Sensemaking from the body: an enactive ethnography of rowing the Amazon

Drawing on real-time video, an audio journal, interviews and field notes from the first-ever attempt to scull the navigable Amazon, we explore the promise of carnal sociology to enrich our understanding of embodied organizational sensemaking. We investigate the body’s role in sensemaking from two vantage points: “of the body” and “from the body”. Using methodological and conceptual anchors provided in Wacquant’s carnal sociology, we contrast what each approach tells us about the nature and process of sensemaking. Doing so helps us outline a complementary approach to embodied sensemaking that attends to (1) how a “new way of seeing” the body as sentient, sedimented, situated, and capable of suffering enables a more holistic understanding of the role of embodiment in sensemaking; (2) the importance this then places on the “who” of sensemaking; and (3) carnal sociology’s broader methodological implications for organizational sensemaking

Using Mobile Phones to Improve Vaccination Uptake in 21 Low- and Middle-Income Countries: Systematic Review

Background: The benefits of vaccination have been comprehensively proven, however disparities in coverage persist due to poor health system management, limited resources and parental knowledge and attitudes. Evidence suggests that health interventions that engage local parties in communication strategies improve vaccination uptake. As mobile technology is widely used to improve health communication, mobile health (mHealth) interventions might be used to increase coverage. Objective: To conduct a systematic review of the available literature on the use of mHealth to improve vaccination in low and middle income countries with large numbers of unvaccinated children. Methods: In February 2017, MEDLINE, Scopus and Web of Science, and three health organization websites; Communication Initiative Network, TechNet-21, and PATH, were searched to identify mHealth intervention studies on vaccination uptake in 21 countries. Results: Ten peer-reviewed studies and eleven studies from white or grey literature were included. Nine took place in India, three in Pakistan, two each in Malawi and Nigeria, and one each in Bangladesh, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Kenya. Ten peer-reviewed studies and seven white/grey studies demonstrated improved vaccination uptake after interventions, including appointment reminders, mobile phone apps and pre-recorded messages. Conclusions: While the potential for mHealth interventions to improve vaccination coverage seems clear, the evidence for such interventions is not. The dearth of studies in countries facing the greatest barriers to immunization impedes the prospects for evidence-based policy and practice in these settings.The study was funded by the Medical Research Council, British Heart Foundation, and Homerton College, Cambridge

Mobile health for cancer in low to middle income countries: priorities for research and development.

The is the accepted manuscript of an article published in the European Journal of Cancer Care (Holeman, I., Evans, J., Kane, D., Grant, L., Pagliari, C. and Weller, D. (2014), Mobile health for cancer in low to middle income countries: priorities for research and development. European Journal of Cancer Care, 23: 750–756. doi: 10.1111/ecc.12250)Many current global health opportunities have less to do with new biomedical knowledge than with the coordination and delivery of care. While basic research remains vital, the growing cancer epidemic in countries of low and middle income warrants urgent action - focusing on both research and service delivery innovation. Mobile technology can reduce costs, improve access to health services, and strengthen health systems to meet the interrelated challenges of cancer and other noncommunicable diseases. Experience has shown that even very poor and remote communities that only have basic primary health care can benefit from mobile health (or 'mHealth') interventions. We argue that cancer researchers and practitioners have an opportunity to leverage mHealth technologies that have successfully targeted other health conditions, rather than reinventing these tools. We call for particular attention to human centred design approaches for adapting existing technologies to suit distinctive aspects of cancer care and to align delivery with local context - and we make a number of recommendations for integrating mHealth delivery research with the work of designers, engineers and implementers in large-scale delivery programmes

Insights from an ICT4D initiative in Kenya's immunization program: designing for the emergence of sociomaterial practices

ICT4D initiatives hold the potential to transform health service delivery in settings of poverty, yet, in practice, they face many of the same implementation complexities and coordination challenges as the global health and development programs that they aim to streamline or strengthen. Researchers and practitioners alike are now quick to observe that “context matters”, but such an observation does not amount to a coherent alternative vision of more appropriate ICT4D design and implementation. In this paper, we draw on the metaphor of imbrication to elucidate the iterative process by which ICTs become entangled with particular contexts of use. Our longitudinal ethnographic study examines the implementation and iterative redesign of an Internet of things (IoT) technology that collects real-time data and alerts health workers of disruptions in the cold storage of vaccines in Kenya. Extending recent work on imbrication, we show that technologies imbricate not only with the social context but also with local material infrastructure and that designers play a limited yet clearly consequential role in this process. To explain these findings, we highlight instances of material “back talk” and concomitant practice breakdown in which initial attempts to shape a situation yield puzzling or unappreciated consequences, which lead designers to accommodate material realities and, ultimately, pursue unanticipated courses of action. Drawing on these conceptual tools, we reveal six overlapping activities through which designers may guide the emergence of sociomaterial practices. We say that they design for the emergence of sociomaterial practices to underscore that designers cannot predict or control all contextual complexities, though they can adapt to them when they arise. Based on our insights about this process, we develop three contributions. First, we offer fresh perspective on the longstanding concern with local context in ICT4D research. Second, we suggest that our notion of designing for the emergence of sociomaterial practices is relevant for and adds to contextually aware design research frameworks such as action design research. Finally, we propose that ICT4D practitioners should attend to practice breakdowns and material back talk as they grapple with the complexities of the implementation bottleneck in global health and development

Identification of Idiom Usage in C++ Generic Libraries

Abstract—A tool supporting the automatic identification of programming idioms specific to the construction of C++ generic libraries is presented. The goal is to assist developers in understanding the complex syntactic elements of these libraries. Large C++ generic libraries are notorious for being extremely difficult to comprehend due to their use of advanced language features and idiomatic nature. To facilitate automated identification, the idioms are equated to micropatterns, which can be evaluated by a fact extractor. These micropattern instances act as beacons for the idioms being identified. The method is applied to study a number of widely used open source C++ generic libraries