Negotiating boundaries

Abstract

To move treatment successfully from the hospital to that of technology assisted self-care at home, it is vital in the design of such technologies to understand the setting in which the health IT should be used. Based on qualitative studies we find that people engage in elaborate boundary work to maintain the order of the home when managing disease and adopting new healthcare technology. In our analysis we relate this boundary work to two continuums of visibility-invisibility and integration-segmentation in disease management. We explore five factors that affect the boundary work: objects, activities, places, character of disease, and collaboration. Furthermore, the processes are explored of how boundary objects move between social worlds pushing and shaping boundaries. From this we discuss design implications for future healthcare technologies for the home.