The reality of medical work: The case for a new perspective on telemedicine

This paper considers the nature of medical work and how new telemedicine technologies can be developed to support that work. Telemedicine developers attempt to increase communication and collaboration between medical practitioners and between patients and medics, with the goal being to make medical care and information more easily accessible. However, the focus of telemedicine systems appears to have so far been technology centred, and the work they are trying to support is often ignored. We argue that to develop appropriate telemedicine technologies, it is important to understand the nature of medical work, and to examine the manner in which medical practiceactually occurs. Only then will we be in a position to design appropriate telemedicine technologies to support these activities. Unless designers have an insight into the work itself, new technologies will continue to fail to support what telemedicine effectively aims to promote — collaboration and access to distributed knowledge.