THE CITH PROJECT
The CITH Research Project
The CITH project studied chronic heart failure patients with Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillators (ICDs) at the Heart Centres at Rigshospitalet and Bispebjerg Hospital.
The aim was to design health information technology that supports clinicians and patients to communicate and collaborate across organizational and professional boundaries and between patients’ homes and hospitals. The technologies were iteratively prototyped and tested in real-life situations using video ethnography and design interventions to document and explore the effects.
Follow the Patient
A fundamental design principle in the CITH project was to ‘follow the patient.’ This meant that our ethnographic fieldwork would take the patient as the point of departure and navigate through the healthcare system via the patient. It enabled us to see the challenges faced by patients much more clearly.
Clinical Workflows
A precursor to any great design is to understand the problem and work practice that we are designing support for. In healthcare, this means that we need to investigate the care paths and clinical work flows meticulously in order to get a thorough understanding.
Video Ethnography
We experimented with so-called design interventions as a way to stage tryouts of new technology in real clinical practice. Using video ethnography to capture the intervention, so we could later analyse and learn from the situation.
Funding
Funded by a Danish government grant
