Kyng’s work in Danish Telehealth [Delvin Varghese]

Kyng presented a paper reflecting on the work they achieved with a foundation called 4S, in association with healthcare professionals, patients, citizens, public healthcare organisations and researchers. 4S comprises of an IT-infrastructure toolbox and a telemedicine/telehealth platform called OpenTele. The author contrasts their work in Participatory Design with the approach embraced in 4S. Traditional PD ‘began as an effort towards extending concerns for workplace democracy to cover IT’, whereas 4S began as an effort to get the most out of a set of IT infrastructure tools.

The solutions they implemented were widely used and embraced by the Danish government, showing a very positive response from stakeholders and their target clients.

However, the author makes some claims that need further investigation to back them. For instance, they haven’t mentioned in detail a comparison of their work (which has involved an explicit focus on PD) with other work in the area. Secondly, they have highlighted how 4S fits within the narrative of Public finances and tax evasion, and how 4S has become associated with the fight against the system. However, now that they have the backing of the government and general positive consensus, the author hasn’t maintained how they would avoid being associated with the mucipalities and their healthcare systems, seeing as they are major stakeholders in 4S. in essence, how will the author avoid 4S from becoming part of the very system they stand to differentiate themselves from?

A minor comment to be added is that the author doesn’t explain why they think that an industry-wide methodology like SCRUM, is inferior to PD methods.

What the author does well is document where 4S and its constituents fit within the socio-political narrative in Denmark, and they do this well, bringing in numerous related works and case studies to back up their claims.

The paper I would like to present this week is:

Hook, J., Verbaan, S., Durrant, A., Olivier, P. & Wright, P. A Study of the Challenges Related to DIY Assistive Technology in the Context of Children with Disabilities. In Proc. of DIS ’14, ACM, 597-606
http://dl.acm.org/authorize?N71486

My reason for choosing this paper (in addition to the fact that it is within the Digital Civics context in Open Lab) is that it involved a wide range of stakeholders, who were involved in the design process.