On creating and sustaining alternatives: The case of Danish Telehealth

The author of this paper is Morten Kyng. The author discuss the stages of a foundation “4S” that started as an organisation to promote and develop an open source IT-infrastructure toolbox, yet ended up as an open source telemedicine platform which made it a frame for sustaining democratic user influence. In his discussion, the author emphases on presenting the significant role that participatory design (PD) has played in developing such a platform. Participants were almost all categories of stakeholders including: researcher, managers, patients, health care professionals, health IT and other users. However, the role of each groups was not clearly explained in the paper. The main focus was on the impacts which we could learn two important lessons from. First, successful designs and projects do not necessarily end up meeting the original agenda and requirement defined before starting the project. Second, involving stockholders within the design process can make a massive difference to what the designers planned to do. Both demonstrate the impacts of sustaining democratic user influence. These impacts include: innovation, developing software ecosystems, promoting open source software, decreasing public finance and enhancing participatory design. However, the author did not present the measurements and results to validate these impacts although he explained in details the effort made to make these impacts. As a key takeaway, I would say that establishing an organisation that aims to sustain democratic control by all stakeholders is not easily implemented. The example mentioned by the author in this paper, as he presents, shows that it was a coincidence for the foundation “4S” to go through this path. However, the fact that such an organisation is not easily implemented does not mean the impossibility of such a project. According to the factors mentioned in the paper, such a project can be very successful in many aspects. Finally, engaging stakeholders not only in the design process but during all other stages can lead to implementing a democratic control model.

 

 

The paper I chose for this week is: