Context and Context-Awareness: Understanding
Opportunities in a Healthcare Environment
Claus B Christensen, Thomas B. Nielsen, Per S Nielsen
Department of Computer Science
University of Aalborg
Frederik Bajersvej 7
9220 Aalborg
Denmark
broholm@cs.aau.dk, basil@cs.aau.dk, psn@cs.aau.dk
Abstract. Context-awareness is a promising concept in software design, which
based on sensed environmental input, makes intelligent decisions on behalf of
the user to present relevant information and minimize interaction on a mobile
device. But how do you investigate a mobile work domain to pinpoint contextaware opportunities and what do you look for? This paper is an empirical study,
where we examine a mobile healthcare domain with focus on pinpointing
context-aware functionality. We base our study on a participatory design
technique called contextual enquiry and a data sorting technique called affinity
diagramming. With solid knowledge of what context-awareness is and what it
can do, it is our experience that there are several context-aware opportunities to
extract from any mobile work domain using these techniques. We will end this
paper with a discussion and future work of our results.
1.0 Introduction.
Context-awareness is a potentially rewarding software solution to the problems that
occur when using small mobile devices in a work situation. Mobile devices suffer
from limited screen size and limited input and output possibilities. Traditional
interaction with mobile devices is often based on a stylus and a tap interface on a
pressure sensitive screen. This interface limits the interaction, and makes data input
and manipulation very challenging compared to standard desktop environments
[1].These attributes makes the need for effective interfaces profound. The solution to
the problem could be a way to make the software more intelligent by using the notion
of context-awareness. Context-awareness encompasses the ability to present relevant
information based on sensed input from the surroundings without any input from the
user, which could improve usability. Recent years, the focus on usability on small
mobile devices has become an issue, since more and more use these devices in mobile
work domains. Recently a pilot project was launched in the Danish healthcare domain
of in-home help.
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Claus B Christensen, Thomas B. Nielsen, Per S Nielsen
In 2003, 6 municipalities participated in the project of incorporating mobile IT
solutions to ease the communication flow, between healthcare assistants, nurses and
hospitals [2]. The purpose of the project was to test and try different IT solutions,
mainly using PDA’s. The main goal was to make the possibilities and challenges of
mobile solutions visible to the public sector. The obvious advantage of using mobile
technology is the small size and the wireless communication possibilities using
technologies like GPRS1 or WIFI2. Accessing and submitting data for a client anytime
and almost anywhere is possible reducing the need for duplication of effort.
Based on the fact that mobile devices like PDA’s are becoming a greater part of the
healthcare domain in Denmark, the need for user-friendly systems is essential for a
healthcare assistant. In this paper we want to present the empirical work on how we
gained access to a typical mobile healthcare domain to discover which needs a
healthcare assistant has in their work. Moreover we will present the way we
understand context and context-awareness to ultimately present how different work
situations can make use of intelligent software to present relevant data to a user.
2.0 Background
This section will include background information on previous empirical work on
context-awareness. Moreover a definition of context and context-awareness will be
presented and discussed here.
2.1 Related work
Conducting a field study is good in the sense that information retrieval is done in
natural settings with high authenticity. Here observations and evaluations of practices
can be evaluated in natural surroundings. The disadvantage is a rather cumbersome
and difficult data collection, where unknown sample bias can appear, and the studies
are often rather time-consuming [3]. Several papers investigating the opportunities of
context-awareness have used empirical studies to unravel work processes or user
preferences. Skov et al. have used an ethnographic study to make a requirement
specification to explore context-awareness in a mobile healthcare environment in a
hospital. Based on their findings they identify several challenges suitable for contextaware solutions [4]. Tamminen et al. make an ethnographic study where they
conclude that: “Empirical studies of mobile contexts offer a rich source for
innovation of new context-aware services and for the design of underlying context
recognition mechanisms” [p.27, 5]. Kaasinen carry out several empirical studies to
study user attitudes, needs and preferences for location-aware services. They manage
1
2
General Packet Radio Service(GPRS) is a mobile data service available to users of GSM
mobile phones. [http://www.wikipedia.com(2005)]
WiFi is a trademark for sets of product compatibility standards for wireless local area
networks (WLANs). [http://www.wikipedia.com(2005)]
Context and Context-Awareness: Understanding Opportunities in a Healthcare Environment
3
to pinpoint several important aspects of user preferences, and describe their work as
successful [6].
A common attribute from the studies presented above is the time-consuming work
empirical work requires. But the success of using empirical studies makes this a good
way to establish context-aware opportunities in any environment.
2.2 Context and Context-Awareness
Context-aware computing is a way of making software more intelligent. To
achieve this, the system senses environmental input like the current location of the
user, time of day or nearby objects or people. Based on these input the system is
programmed to react sensibly by presenting information to the user or reacting in a
predefined way. This reduces the need to interact with the system, only using the
limited screen space to present relevant information to the user. Previously we have
conducted a literature study focusing on research papers involving context-awareness.
Based on this study, we found that the context-information can be extracted to
produce some context-aware functionality, but the way information is presented is
very important [7]. Context-aware computing is intelligence that balances on a knife’s
edge, where you want to help and not limit the user. Since no system or human can
read the mind of a user, we have to consider the risk of making mistakes and handling
ambiguity. This is why we find the definition of context-awareness as presented by
Chen and Kotz appropriate as they divide context-awareness in active and passive
context-awareness respectively [8].
Active context awareness: an application automatically adapts to discovered
context, by changing the application’s behaviour.
Passive context awareness: an application presents the new or updated context to
an interested user or makes the context persistent for the user to retrieve later.
[8]
Active context-awareness automatically updates application behaviour. This means
that the system takes control, which requires a high probability that the updated
information is correct. If not, passive context-awareness should be considered, since
this presents possible interesting information to the user, but does not automatically
change anything. The use of either one should be based on in-depth knowledge of
user needs in different situations or contexts. Context is according to the previous
definitions on context-awareness described as something that are “discovered”, “new”
or “updated”:
Context is the set of environmental states and settings that either determines an
application’s behaviour or in which an application event occurs and is interesting to
the user.
[8]
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Claus B Christensen, Thomas B. Nielsen, Per S Nielsen
Context is some environmental state and setting whom Chen and Kotz further have
categorized as being a part of one or more of these five variables:





Computing context, such as network connectivity, communication costs,
and communication bandwidth, and nearby resources such as printers,
displays, and workstations.
User context, such as the user’s profile, location, people nearby, even the
current social situation.
Physical context, such as lighting, noise levels, traffic conditions, and
temperature.
Time context, such as time of a day, week, month, and season of the year.
History context, when the computing, user and physical contexts, are
recorded across a time span
To find context-aware opportunities in a mobile work setting, you need to identify
which information is needed in a given context, which somehow can be measured
from one or more of the five variables given above. E.g. if certain information is
necessary on a specific time of day, a context-aware functionality would be to present
this information triggered by the context variable: “Time context”. In section 5.0 we
will use the above context variables, to present how context-awareness can be inferred
based on the analyzed data from our empirical work. In the next section we will
present how our empirical investigation was conducted.
3.0 Mobile work for healthcare assistants
In this section we will present the setting and the participants of our empirical work
before describing how we collected and analyzed our data.
3.1 Setting
We initiated collaboration with the “Gandrup-group” which is a subdivision of the
healthcare domain of the in-home help department under the municipality of Hals.
The healthcare assistants who work in the “Gandrup-group” are mobile, and require
different information, when visiting different places on different times of day. These
diverse environmental settings make a suitable case for us to examine context-aware
opportunities for this healthcare domain.
3.2 Participants
Four healthcare assistants participated over a period of two days. This section will
give a summary of the characteristics for each assistant. The profiles for the
participants can be seen in table 1.
Context and Context-Awareness: Understanding Opportunities in a Healthcare Environment
5
Table 1. List of participants, based on a questionarie filled out by each participant before each
session.
Name
Age
Exp. as healthcare
assistant
Knowledge of
clients visited
Exp. with a
PDA
Exp. with IT
V
X
Y
Z
36
34
50
47
12 years
11 years
21 years
22 years
Very well
Very well
Very well
Very well
3 months
24 hours
3 months
3 months
Experienced
Inexperienced
Inexperienced
Experienced
As it can be seen in table 1 all of the healthcare assistants were experienced in
doing their job. They all had good knowledge of the clients they were going to visit,
since they usually were assigned the same clients.
3.3 Data Collection
We conducted contextual enquiry sessions in order to collect data from our users.
Contextual enquiry is a technique, where the designer meets with the user, to observe
the setting in which work takes place. By engaging in the work domain, you gain
appropriate and helpful information about the user’s work. You learn about processes,
information exchange and important knowledge about the types of context in which
information is needed and submitted [9].
Each day we arrived at the healthcare centre in Gandrup at 06.30. Here we observed
the exchange of information from the night-shift to the day-shift. Furthermore we
observed a morning meeting, where all the staff meets and the distribution of clients
take place. When the meeting finished we went with the first healthcare assistant to
her clients. During these visits we followed the healthcare assistant, observing, asking
and logging information with pen and paper. We made sure to emphasize that we did
not focus on their current system, but wanted them to show and tell us all about their
work. We stressed the importance of her focusing on situations where she needed to
acquire, exchange or log information. The reason for us to emphasize this is that
contextual enquiry is based on the thesis that people can not tell you about their work,
but they can show you. There are a lot of things, which people have difficulties
articulating, because of the type of knowledge they have of their work. This is also
known as tacit knowledge. You can only gain access to this knowledge by observing
users and asking them, in a situation, which reveals the knowledge even though it is
transparent to the user [9]. The left picture in Figure 1 shows how the interviewer
observes two healthcare assistants performing some work, and in the right picture
shows a typical interaction between the interviewer and the healthcare assistant.
Whenever we saw an interesting situation we would ask the healthcare assistant an
open question: E.g. ''Is there any information you would find relevant in this
situation?'' The answer would then be logged on our paper with a description of the
situation. A typical note would look like this: ''When deploying medicine it would nice
to know if the night-nurse has prescribed any medicine''
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Claus B Christensen, Thomas B. Nielsen, Per S Nielsen
Fig. 1. Pictures from a contextual enquiry session in Gandrup
In some situations the healthcare assistant would by themselves describe a given
information to be relevant. E.g. ''If this were my first time, it would be nice to have a
map to show me a route to the client.'' This gave us an indication that the healthcare
assistants understood which kind of information we were looking for.
For each healthcare assistant we performed a session as described above, giving a
total of 4 sessions. Based on the information obtained from these four sessions, we
had gathered a vast amount of data that needed to be sorted and analyzed. To help us
do this we conducted an affinity diagramming session.
3.4 Data Analysis
The collected data was analyzed using affinity diagramming. Affinity diagramming is
a way of sorting large amounts of data into groups to recognize patterns and generate
different results [10]. We used this method to analyse our data in two steps.
First we sorted our data by writing data on to different post-it markers and stuck
them on a black-board to get an overview. Then we grouped and sorted the post-it
markers by reading them aloud one by one, and in collaboration placing them in
categories with similar information and characteristics until all data had been placed.
Fig. 2. Pictures from the affinity diagramming session based on the information from the
contextual enquiry.
Context and Context-Awareness: Understanding Opportunities in a Healthcare Environment
7
The pictures in figure 2 show how different members of the group move post-it
markers into different categories to create different views of the data. After the
process of working with the data, we had a draft of our understanding of the
healthcare assistants work processes.
Secondly we held a final session with representatives from the “Gandrup-group” to
verify our understanding of their work. We prepared four pieces of paper in A2 size,
wrote the results from the affinity diagramming session on post-it markers and placed
them on the papers. The rightmost picture in figure 3 shows an overview of the papers
as they were presented to the assistants. We wanted to make an affinity diagramming
hybrid, where the manager and a member of the staff could help us verify the results
and thereby our understanding of their organization and work processes. By using
post-it markers, the presented information on the papers should indicate an easy way
to move data if wrongly placed or understood. Moreover empty post-it markers were
available to fill out and place in the table, in case data was missing. The picture to the
left in figure 3 shows how a healthcare assistant moves a wrongly placed post-it
marker.
Fig. 3. Pictures of the affinity diagramming hybrid with staff from the “Gandrup-group”
verifying our results from the original contextual enquiry sessions.
The verification session was a success, since our understanding had suffered from
some misinterpretations, which was caught during this work. Some post-it markers
were removed and some were added to complete the picture. Based on this work we
now have an overview of the important roles, dynamic contexts and the work
processes of the “Gandrup-group”, which will be presented in the next section.
4.0 Findings
In this section we will shortly present the work domain of the “Gandrup-group”
before presenting the results from the data extracted. To exemplify a typical work
situation we will present a scenario description for a healthcare assistant. Lastly we
will outline some challenges based on our findings.
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Claus B Christensen, Thomas B. Nielsen, Per S Nielsen
4.1 Overview
The “Gandrup-group” has one manager and eight healthcare assistants employed.
Five assistants at a time work the day-shift from 8.00 until 15.00 in a three-shift
rotation. The Gandrup area has approximately 50 clients associated, which is mainly
elderly people spread over diverse locations. Usually the healthcare assistants reach
the elderly either by bike or car. Furthermore a cohabitation for a number of mentally
ill patients is located in Gandrup, whom also receives help from the healthcare
assistants. Each healthcare assistant is assigned as “primary helper” for a number of
clients, which she usually is assigned, when at work. A typical assignment for a
healthcare assistant could be to help a client get out of bed in the morning, shower and
prepare breakfast. Assignments change during the day. At 13.00 only two healthcare
assistants attends the clients, before handing over responsibility to the afternoon shift.
In June 2005 the “Gandrup-group” had incorporated the use of PDA’s in their work,
and had some experience with using small mobile devices.
4.2 Results
Because of our focus on context-awareness the results outlined here is based on the
situations where the healthcare assistants acquire, exchange or log information.
Moreover we noted in which context the different information was used and if there
were any differences in the type of role each healthcare assistant had. This also allow
us to draw on how the context differs and how this difference can be measured,
exploiting the advantages of using context-awareness in a future application. We
identified three different roles and seven different contexts in which different types of
information were needed.
Roles
We identified three main roles in the “Gandrup-group”: The “manager”, the
“experienced healthcare assistant” and the ”inexperienced healthcare assistant”. The
manager have mainly organizational assignments such as planning the day for the
healthcare assistants, handling sickness among staff and solving different types of
problems during the day. The experienced and the inexperienced healthcare assistants
differ according to the type of data they need in the different contexts. E.g. an
experienced healthcare assistant knows how to handle a specific client, whereas an
inexperienced one would need a great deal of information before arriving to a new
client.
Context
We divided the day into seven different contexts. The first context is “Planning the
day”, where the manager has the only active role, distributing clients to healthcare
assistants, managing sickness etc. The second context is “Morning meeting”, where
the manager and healthcare assistants meet to discuss the work for the day. “Driving
to or between clients” happens, when the healthcare assistants has finished the work
from one client before visiting the next. “Visit” is when the healthcare assistant is at
the location of a client and performing her job. “Cohabitation” is the location of the
Context and Context-Awareness: Understanding Opportunities in a Healthcare Environment
9
small community of mentally ill clients. “Lunch or random meeting” is the context
where information is exchanged during lunch or when healthcare assistants meet on
their route. Lastly the context “Day to night shift” occurs when information from the
dayshift is passed to the nightshift. The contexts “Driving to or between clients”,
“Visit” and “Random meeting” reoccur during the day. We will now present a
scenario description of a typical day for a healthcare assistant.
4.3 Scenario Description of a Healthcare Assistant
For illustrative purpose, we have chosen to outline a typical day for a healthcare
assistant. The outline is not exhaustive but contains some of the more important
aspects of the information exchange in different contexts. The scenario description
relates to figure 4. The letter legends in the text refer to the letters in the figure.
Fig. 4. Sketch of a typical day for a healthcare assistant. The letter legends refer to the letters in
the text.
Ms. Jensen is a healthcare assistant whom arrive at work at 07.00. She attends the
morning meeting (A), where she receives her daily assignments from the manager in
both a printed and a digital version. The digital version is updated on a PDA, which
each assistant is given for the day. Ms. Jensen takes a quick look on her assignments,
and notices a new client on her list that she does not usually attend. Since the client’s
usual healthcare assistant Ms. Hansen is at work, Ms. Jensen asks the manager if this
is a mistake. The manager admits the mistake and changes the client back to Ms.
Hansen. Ms. Jensen also takes a look in two books located in the group-room. One
book has an overview of appointments for all clients in the “Gandrup-group”, and she
needs to see if any of her clients has appointments to a doctor or other variations this
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Claus B Christensen, Thomas B. Nielsen, Per S Nielsen
day. Another book tells her whether the nightshift has any comments on some of her
clients that she needs to be aware of. There is a comment that client D (D) has been
tossing and turning all night. Ms. Jensen makes a note of this in her own calendar.
Ms. Jensen first assignment is to attend to the cohabitation (B) with a colleague. The
two healthcare assistants have three hours assigned for this task. The social workers in
the cohabitation write assignments on a shared blackboard for each day. Ms. Jensen
reads the list before commencing her work. This morning two clients are to attend
work and have to be ready for the bus at 09.00. When Ms. Jensen has finished her
work at the cohabitation, she makes a note to the social workers about any deviations
from their normal routine.
Ms. Jensen now drives in a car to her next client (D). Before she reaches the client
she makes a stop (C) to quickly scan thorough the assignments for client D. Besides
helping the client make dinner, do laundry and order groceries from the supermarket
she notices her own comment on the sleeping disorder. During the visit she decides to
call the nurse, because she feels that client D has gotten a fever. The nurse arrives
shortly hereafter and decides to hospitalize the client. After visiting client D, Ms.
Jensen is done for the day and returns back to the group-room (A). On her way back
she runs into a colleague (E), who tells her that she is behind her schedule. Ms. Jensen
agrees on helping her colleague by taking one of her clients. Ms. Jensen then drives to
client G (G). Since she does not know the way, she has to get a map of Gandrup and
look up the assignments for the new client on her PDA (F). Client G is well and the
assignments are quickly done. Ms. Jensen then proceeds back to the group-room to
return the PDA and pass information about her clients to the evening shift. She makes
a note in the book in the group-room, that client D is hospitalized and does not need
care until further notice. She then leaves work to go home.
The scenario described above is a simplified version of a normal working day for a
healthcare assistant. Even so it pinpoints some of the most predominant challenges
which we will consider in the following section.
4.4 Challenges
The most predominant challenge identified is the different kind of information
scattered throughout the work domain. In the group-room two different books are
located where important data about the clients are held. One book holds messages
from the different shifts, where irregularities with clients can be written. Another
book holds information about appointments or scheduled changes for a client. In the
cohabitation more information is located. The blackboard holds information about the
assignments for the day, and a book keeps information about any irregularities for the
residents of the cohabitation. Some type of information is also identified as being too
sensitive to be written down. This type of information is usually given orally and only
to the persons who needs it. Besides this context dependent information the
assignment list holds the regular information about the clients, where the PDA holds
confidential information such as the journal for each client.
Context and Context-Awareness: Understanding Opportunities in a Healthcare Environment
11
Another challenge identified is the updating of information to other staff members.
As outlined above different information is to be written many places and risks of
errors or negligence are present. Moreover the healthcare assistants are only able to
access but not update client journals with the PDA. This way they have to make a
note of any changes and make the updates in the group-room.
As illustrated above a lot of different information is needed in different contexts. In
this next section we will give examples of context-aware opportunities in a healthcare
environment based on the context variables as listed in section 1.1.
5.0 Presentation of Context-Aware Opportunities in a Healthcare
Environment
In this section we will try to exemplify how context-awareness can be used to cope
with some of the challenges of working in a mobile healthcare domain. These
context-aware functionalities will be based on the different roles and different
contexts we have identified in the previous section. Finally considerations according
to using active or passive context-awareness have to be evaluated. Based on previous
work with active and passive context-awareness [7] we are convinced that only user
evaluation will show the appropriate use, and we will therefore not pursue this in the
following examples.
Based on [8] five variables of context together with our knowledge from our
empirical study, we will present examples from each context category, to show how
context-awareness can be implemented in a context-aware mobile system. The
examples listed here will not be exhaustive, but we have listed the most predominant
ones. The examples will be listed as follows:
Type of context variable
Specific type of context variable
 Observed in timeslot for this user
 Explanation of the problem observed during our empirical study
 CA: How context-awareness (CA) can solve this.
Computing context:
Network connectivity
 Observed at the “morning meeting” for both types of healthcare assistants
 The users were concerned what to do, when they got an English error message,
specifying problems with network connectivity.
 CA: Specify that the system has gone offline, and system information may be
outdated. Make a sound and ask to send input information, when connectivity is
restored.
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Claus B Christensen, Thomas B. Nielsen, Per S Nielsen
User context:
User profile
 Observed at the “morning meeting” for both types of healthcare assistants
 When the system boots, the users would like to know whether changes to the
“ordinary” care-plan for the clients on their lists have changed.
 CA: When the system boots up, it should show a list of newly added information
about the clients.
------------Location
 Observed “Driving to or between clients” for both types of healthcare assistants
 If a healthcare assistant needs to get in contact with a specific colleague, it may
be a bad time to call, if that particular assistant is working with a client.
 CA: The system sets the healthcare assistants availability to “busy” which gives
the caller a possibility to leave a message or call back later.
------------Location
 Observed “Driving to or between clients” for both types of healthcare assistants
 When travelling between clients the assistant would like to see which tasks to
perform at the next client.
 CA: According to the current position the system suggest showing the next client
on the list. Should that particular client have any new information to the care-list,
this information will be emphasised.
------------Location, user profile
 Observed “Driving to or between clients” for inexperienced healthcare assistant.
 An inexperienced healthcare assistant would like to get route information, on
how to get to the different clients.
 CA: When travelling between clients the PDA changes to a map interface with a
route to the next client on the list.
------------Location
 Observed during “visit” for both types of healthcare assistants.
 Not all information about clients is “official”. Sometime information concerning
a client should only be shown to the healthcare assistant who is about to attend
that specific client.
 CA: Information can be attached to a specific location only appearing, when the
PDA is in a specific proximity of the client’s house. This way the information is
only visible for the healthcare assistant taking care of that specific client.
Physical context:
 We do not have any CA features according to physical context.
Time context:
Time
 Observed at the “cohabitation” for both types of healthcare assistants.
Context and Context-Awareness: Understanding Opportunities in a Healthcare Environment


13
In the cohabitation certain clients had to be helped before a specific time. It
would be nice to have an overview of this.
CA: The system show info about time-critical clients, and remind the healthcare
assistant of this.
History context:
History
 Observed at “planning the day” for manager.
 Clients normally have the same healthcare assistants but it sometimes happens
that a client is assigned to the wrong healthcare assistant.
 CA: The system reports any possible errors of client distribution according to
knowledge of previous assigned clients.
Uses more than one context variable:
Location, Time and History
 Observed “Driving to or between clients” for inexperienced healthcare assistant.
 Since time allocated to different clients overlap, it can be difficult to keep track
on whether you are finishing tasks in due time. It would be nice to be reminded if
you are behind.
 CA: The system makes a sound and warns the healthcare assistant, according to
the remaining tasks and time. The time estimation could be calculated according
to “history context” relying on the time it normally takes to finish a task.
------------People nearby, User profile, Time
 Observed “Driving to or between clients” for both types of healthcare assistants
 If a healthcare assistant is behind, or problems arise they call a random colleague
to either help out or hand over clients.
 CA: The system suggests calling the colleague closest or the one who is up to
speed with his or her schedule.
Non Context-Aware Functionality:
To exemplify a functionality not suited for context-awareness is when a healthcare
assistant needs to communicate with a nurse. If it is critical a phone call is normally
the best procedure, otherwise a note in the client’s journal will be sufficient. Because
of the human evaluative state of this action, the application has no way of telling how
to react.
From the examples listed, location is a predominant context variable to infer
context-aware functionality from. We also find it interesting that some functionality
uses more than one context variable.
Having identified some predominant challenges and context-aware opportunities
we will now discuss some of our experiences.
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Claus B Christensen, Thomas B. Nielsen, Per S Nielsen
Discussion:
The challenge of this paper is to identify how to use context-awareness in a mobile
healthcare setting. We have used contextual enquiry to gain insight into a work
domain, identified different profiles and contexts in which information changes.
Based on this information and knowledge on context variables and context-aware
computing, we have identified predominant context-aware functionality we think will
help a healthcare assistant in her mobile work domain. We will shortly discuss each
step taken throughout this paper.
Our results are based on a contextual enquiry conducted over 2 days, with four
different healthcare assistants. To gather more information about the work domain,
more days could have been spent and several different healthcare assistants could
have been followed. A gap in our investigation would be the lack of information from
a truly inexperienced healthcare assistant and not just the information gathered from
the experienced ones. This could have revealed obvious information gaps whom
experienced healthcare assistants take for granted.
Our post-it hybrid presented during our verification process was a success, since
we got direct feedback on our knowledge of the work environment. The healthcare
assistants could explicitly see our understanding of information exchange during each
context for each profile, and hence correct this if it was misinterpreted. We would like
to emphasise this practise, since it was a very positive experience.
This case study is in one sense not very general since the information and work
flow could be different in other healthcare environments. What we hope to show is
how to work with well known tools like contextual enquiry and affinity diagramming
to create a knowledge foundation on which you can extract ideas and user needs for
context-aware functionality. We hope to have contributed with a way to engage in any
mobile work domain in pursuit of context-aware opportunities.
Conclusion and Future work:
In this paper we have conducted empirical work on how to extract information
needs in a mobile healthcare domain with focus on pinpointing context-aware
functionality. We have conducted a contextual enquiry session, extracted and sorted
information using affinity diagramming. We have verified our understanding of the
work domain, by producing an affinity diagramming hybrid, where we involved the
users in moving information around. Lastly we have presented predominant contextaware functionality for the domain of healthcare assistants for the “Gandrup-group”,
which show a potentially rewarding integration of context-awareness in this domain.
Future work would be to develop a prototype witch encompasses some of the contextaware functionality presented above. It would be interesting to see how active and
passive context-awareness should be used in different contexts with different types of
Context and Context-Awareness: Understanding Opportunities in a Healthcare Environment
15
information. Furthermore an investigation of design principles for mobile devices
needs to be conducted and extensive user evaluations should be used as a tool to
measure the success of the implementations.
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