The emergence and unfolding of telemonitoring practices in different healthcare organizations

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Jannie Kristine Bang Christensen

Aalborg Universitet, Denmark

: J Nurs Patient Care

Abstract

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Telemonitoring, a sub-category of telemedicine, is promoted as a solution to meet the challenges in western healthcare systems in terms of an increasing population of people with chronic conditions and fragmentation issues. Recent findings from large-scale telemonitoring programs reveal that these promises are difficult to meet in complex real-life settings which may be explained by concentrating on the practices that emerge when telemonitoring is used to treat patients with chronic conditions. This paper explores the emergence and unfolding of telemonitoring practices in relation to a large-scale, interorganizational, home telemonitoring program which involved 5 local health centers, 10 district nurse units, four hospitals and 225 general practice clinics in Denmark. Twenty-eight interviews and 28 hours of observations of health professionals and administrative staff were conducted over a 12-month period from 2014 to 2015. This study’s findings reveal how telemonitoring practices emerged and unfolded differently among various healthcare organizations. This study suggests that the emergence and unfolding of novel practices is the result of complex interplay between existing work practices, alterations of core tasks, inscriptions in the technology and the power to either adopt or ignore such novel practices. The study enhances our understanding of how novel technology like telemonitoring impacts various types of healthcare organizations when implemented in a complex inter-organizational context.

Biography

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Jannie Kristine Bang Christensen has been working has an instructor in the field of Faculty of Social Sciences and Department of Sociology and Social Work in Center for Organization, Management and Administration - COMA

E-mail: jbc@socsci.aau.dk