1 Health Informatics Research in CSCW: Why an Interdisciplinary Focus is Important Madhu Reddy PhD College of Information Sciences and Technology Center for Integrated Healthcare Delivery Systems Penn State University Feb. 24, 2013

Who am I? 3  Ph.D. - University of California, Irvine (2003)  Been part of CSCW since 1998  Research Interests - collaboration and communication within clinical settings  Interested in research at disciplinary intersections  Biomedical Informatics community

Health Informatics  Multiple disciplines  Healthcare  Computer Science  Information Science  Communication  Biology  Health Behavior  Others… 4 PEOPLE, INFORMATION, TECHNOLOGY, & HEALTH-RELATED ACTIVITES

5 Interdisciplinary Research  Does NOT mean being everything to everyone  Academia: driven by disciplinary homes  Understand the research that is done outside of your community  Seems simple but is often not  Visit the research communities that most impact your work

6 CSCW and Health Informatics Are you a CSCW researcher interested in health? Or a health informatics researcher interested in CSCW methods and problems?

7 CSCW and Health Informatics  It matters for certain things (job opportunities, tenure)  BUT if this the field that you want to make as your career and have an impact, you should BE BOTH How can you do this?

8 Making an Impact  Learn to speak the language of the different research communities that you are interested in  Ex: Medical Informatics and Workflow  Publish research (& participate) in the different communities  Do not be dismissive of research from that community

“Grand Challenges”  How can CSCW research inform/change the design of systems or the work that people do in the health fields?  How can CSCW research be “translated” so that researchers in community X will find it useful for them? 9

Change is Happening  New generation of researchers who are more multidisciplinary  More acceptance of publishing across disciplines  More interest in collaborating across disciplines 10

Two Great Papers to Read  Fitzpatrick, G. and G. Ellingsen. (2012). A Review of 25Years of CSCW Research in Healthcare: Contributions, Challenges and Future Agendas. JCSCW. June 2012: pp  Tentori, M., G. Hayes, and M. Reddy. (2012). Pervasive Computing in Hospital, Chronic, and Preventive Care. Foundations and Trends in Human- Computer Interaction. 5(1): pp

12 Thank You!