Problem based learning: Developing competency in knowledge integration in health design

Different communities, organizations, and people hold different views on their own and others wellbeing. It is often challenging to balance different perspectives during the design process when the truth of medicine is competing with the truth of social media and the everyday experience of wellbeing of patients, caregivers, family and friends. In the context of the Masters of Health Design at OCAD University, we develop students’ competency in working with truth through challenging students to engage with multiple ‘truths’ in the design process, engaging deliberately in identifying and working with multiple truth regimes as part of a problem based learning approach. This includes how truth regimes impact the understanding of a challenge area, techniques for engaging with stakeholders, communicating and developing concepts, and the process of seeking and working with feedback for refining and iterating, and finally in communicating project solutions. By engaging in problem based learning, students are exposed to the real challenges of different stakeholder perspectives and in particular how different truth regimes serve to impact what counts as legitimate knowledge and legitimate knowledge representation

Does technology acceptance determine attitudes towards health information technology? The case of electronic remote blood delivery

For many Healthcare Technology Interventions (HIT) attitudes and experiences can have a significant impact on successful implementations. Within transfusion services it is recognized that differences in perspective between blood bank staff and nursing staff affect the adoption of safety practices or interventions. This multi-center study used a questionnaire survey to investigate differences in technology acceptance and attitudes towards Electronic Remote Blood Delivery (ERBD) between blood bank and operating room staff. The results of the survey revealed a significant correlation between attitudes and usage of technology and ERBD acceptance and usability scores (p<.01) as well as a significant effect of role on ERBD acceptance and usability scores (p<.05)

Negotiating capture, resistance, errors, and identity: Confessions from the operating suite.

Conducting research in medical settings can pose particular challenges for research on adoption and adaptation to new technologies, especially when medical errors are a subject of the research, or the research necessitates capture of user behaviors and interactions. A case study of research in a clinical setting explores the experience of the researcher as they negotiate the practical challenges of research and research participants’ acts of resistance. The researcher’s identity, as constructed in the medical setting, serves to make this negotiation more complex. However, this case also illustrates the practical and theoretical approaches that can be applied to overcome these challenges

Track 1.b Introduction: Re-Designing Health: Transforming Systems, Practices and Care

The Re-Designing Health: Transforming Systems, Practices and Care track explores the increasing role and possibility for a wide range of design practices and methods to contribute to health care products, provision, and systems. There is growing recognition of the increasing complexity faced by healthcare systems; critical issues and challenges include ageing populations, chronic diseases, growing drug ineffectiveness, and lack of access to comprehensive services (to name only a few examples). Concurrently design thinking, methods and practices are increasingly recognized as means of addressing complex, multi-levelled and systemic problems. The track session brought together design academics, researchers and practitioners that are working in—and across—areas of design, medicine and health. Employing design methods, practices, and thinking to address a range of healthcare challenges—from individual product to large-scale policy. This track provided a forum for researchers, practitioners, students, and designers to provide evidence for these relationships, document challenges and successes and to provide theoretical and practical models for healthcare and design to work collaboratively to address complex healthcare problems

Dying. Using a public event series as a research tool to open communication on death and dying

This paper will explore the use of public engagement as a strategy for encouraging and enhancing conversations about end of life through the variety of events that were part of the Dying., a public event series that ran in the 2019 DesignTO festival. Dying. invited practitioners, researchers, artists, and designers to collaborate with the wider community to explore the topic of death and dying. The Dying. series attracted over 4,000 attendees in 2019, 14 speakers, and 12 exhibiting artists. These events included public engagement through interactive exhibit, a public art/design show, public lectures, participatory art installations, participatory design workshops, and evidence-based game playing. Dying. encouraged dialogue among community members and practitioners, initiating non-medical portrayals and expression of experiences associated with dying and death. Part, research tool for knowledge mobilisation, the interactive exhibits served to engage the public in sharing experiences of end of life in light weight and playful interactions, as well as more heavy weight interactions. Data gathering for research on health topics using participatory public exhibit was part of the research intention behind the design of the exhibits. Dying. opened an interdisciplinary dialogue between designers, medical practitioners, and the public, addressing a need among practitioners for more opportunities to share their work and learn from colleagues, and a need among the public for opportunities to hear and experience a more varied discourse about death (knowledge mobilization). Dying. creatively offered the public multiple ways to engage with the topic of end of life also supplying supporting resources on advanced care planning and other aspects of end of life decision making

HCI and Health: Learning from Interdisciplinary Interactions

HCI has multidisciplinary roots and has drawn from and contributed to different disciplines, including computer science, psychology, sociology, and medicine. There is a natural overlap between health and HCI researchers, given their joint focus on utilising technologies to better support people’s health and wellbeing. However, the best digital health interventions are not simply the result of the ‘application’ of HCI to the domain of healthcare, but emerge when researchers from both camps seek to overcome differences in disciplinary practices, traditions, and values in order to collaborate more effectively and productively. We propose a special interest group (SIG) to include interdisciplinary researchers (i.e., participants active in both communities) as well as researchers from either discipline, but with interests in the other field