A rise in chronic conditions has put a strain on our healthcare system. Treatment for chronic conditions spans time, agencies, and providers. Information systems such as electronic health records should be helping with the challenge of coordination, but too often they do not. My research aims to alleviate this problem by designing health information systems that fit social practices and workflow. In this talk I will describe my research agenda around collaborative reflection – an informal, unpredictable, and adaptive type of decision-making. I have studied collaborative reflection in behavioral and mental health services for children, which are coordinated across clinical, home, and special education settings. Through participatory design I developed Lilypad, a tablet-based information system for collaborative reflection. I then examined the social impact of Lilypad using deployment studies. I will discuss what the Lilypad project tells us about the way health information systems should be designed and integrated within health service organizations, if they are to have a positive impact on stakeholders involved with managing chronic conditions.

Bio:

Gabriela Marcu is an assistant professor in the College of Computing and Informatics at Drexel University. She obtained her Ph.D. in human-computer interaction this year from Carnegie Mellon University, and her B.S. in informatics from UC Irvine in 2009. Her interdisciplinary research addresses problems in the coordination of health services. She combines computer science with anthropology and design, to develop and study sociotechnical solutions to real-world problems. She has been named a Siebel Scholar, NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Microsoft Research Graduate Women Scholar, and a Google Anita Borg Scholar.