Activity Based Computing: Health workers and the principles of ABC

Abstract

This thesis takes a closer look at Activiy Based Computing (ABC), at health workers and how they use computers, at what aspects of ABC they find useful for their everyday work and at what should be taken into consideration when designing the next generation ABC-system. For answering these questions, doctors and nurses were asked to participate in a workshop where the theme was: "Next generation clinical infomation systems". In all seven health workers participated in two workshops. Previous work has produced the "ABC-principles" and the "Attributes of session-aware systems". The cross-section of the two sets of principles have been derrived, and yielded the list used as the base in the evaluations: Multiple patients Multiple tasks Mobility Collaboration Handover Interruption The two workshops both started with an introduction of the differet principles, before a usability evaluation (evaluating the principles), a role play and finally a focus group (containing a card ranking). In addition some of the participants were observed in their natural environment. The results of the different methods conclude that the evaluated principles all are appreciated by the health workers, but have to be implemented in a satisfactory way. They should all be taken into consideration when designing a new computer system for use within the health sector.