Background: The eHealth era has fully arrived and initiatives to increase and improve utilization of ICT in health care organizations are made in Sweden as in many other countries. However, much focus in research take place after implementation, evaluating the effects of these initiatives, and very little focus is regarding why development projects actually result in certain functionality. Also, few are problematizing the concept of what eHealth services are and what their contribution shall be on the health care environment. Aim and Objective: The main aim of this research was to explore and understand different perspectives and assumptions regarding aims in an eHealth service development. Further, the aim was to create an understanding for how these trough social interaction and activity in an actual development project will construct actual functionality. Method: A qualitative research method was chosen and conducted from a social constructivist point of view. A case, consisting of an eHealth service development project in Jonkoping County Council, where used for data collection through observations and interviews with the participants in the project team. To support formulation of research questions and thematization, a research metaphor was developed. Results: The result of this thesis contains several theoretical and empirical based perspectives and assumptions on eHealth services. eHealth services are expected to support efficiency, information security, extensive usage, pushing bigger changes in the health care environment, be a new and exciting way of working, changing the roles of patients and caregivers and creating empowered and motivated patients. Other result show that, even if all participants felt pleased with the project result, it was hard to relate all choices in functionality to their effect on use quality and expected outcome from using them. Implications are made for how soft system aspects should be included in the project process in development of eHealth services for defining and managing use quality and its relation to system quality.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-23095 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Fruberg, Caroline |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för datavetenskap, fysik och matematik, DFM |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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