EHealth summer school in Dublin, day 1

I really enjoyed the first day of the eHealth summer school here in Dublin! The lectures were very interesting and covered many different topics like patient involvement, ideation and design fiction. Some lectures included case studies based on e.g. patient involvement and both researchers and patient representatives were among the speakers.

Some of the sessions also included practical exercises. The picture above shows part of the result from a short workshop on ideation, where we should try to map out different technical possibilities within eHealth. The method used was really interesting! First every group (about 4-5 participants in each) should write down 4 user groups (pink cards), 4 use contexts (dark blue cards), 4 health conditions (light blue cards) and 4 types of technologies (yellow cards). The cards then had to be arranged as showed in the picture, with one card of each type in each row and column, respectively. This matrix was then used to come up with different eHealth solutions based on the cards in each row and column, respectively. I think this was a very good way of working with ideation, since you were forced to think “outside the box”. For example, it took quite a while for us to come up with an idea for the first column (Nurse, Augmented reality, Life style issues, The patient room). If we hadn’t worked with cards in this way we would probably never have discussed the possibility of the nurse using augmented feedback solutions in the patient room in order to convince the patient about that a certain change in life style is needed!

In another workshop later on the same day, we considered different enablers and barriers regarding eHealth interventions. More, specifically, we locked at capabilities, motivation and opportunities as important factors to consider. Half of the groups looked at barriers and the other half looked at enablers. Even in this case I found the method rewarding. The exercises pinpointed what you need to consider when working with interventions.

The last presentation was about scenarios and how they can be used to inform design. The presentation prepared for the first project task, which was to come up with a few scenarios relevant for the case in the project assignment. I will not discuss the project thoroughly here (or in later blog posts) since the content is confidential – everyone signed a confidentiality form during the registration. I will write about it on a meta level, though. 

After the project work there was a reception at Trinity College and after that I had dinner at a Japanese restaurant with several of my colleagues. A very nice first day!