TechConnect

Health care is an area where new digital technologies increasingly more are expected to contribute to improved quality and efficiency. But new technology isn’t always used the way it was intended. Sometimes a technology becomes useful for one organization, but not for another. Why does this happen? How can we better match new technology with specific organizational an social conditions? The TechConnect-project is a research prohect funded by EU.s Horixon-program, aiming at exploring these questions and develop actionable support for organizations so that new technologies in the future will complement human resources and comptencies.

In the project, a consortium of university- and hospital partners in four countries collaborate. In Sweden, Mälardalen University collaborates with the Region of Västmanland, where three case studies will be performed, with the purpose of developing interventions that will improve the use of advanced digital technologies in healthcare.

Activities

The project runs for 3 years, across 4 phases, and involves a number of activities performed in 6 workpackages (WPs). The core of the project are the case studies performed in phase 2 (WP2), where 12 combinations of advanced digital technologies and users are studied ethographically and through interviews. In the following phase (WP3), interventions are performed which also are studied.

Goals

• Develop a novel and holistic conceptual framework of Human-Tech Skill Complementarity that addresses the complexity and interactions between human skills and technology (WP1)
• Develop a valid Human-Tech Skill Complementarity Index that assesses how human and technological skills interact and complement each other to promote productivity and quality of work and jobs (WP2)
• Strengthen Human-Tech Skill Complementarity via developing and establishing a predictive model to identify the critical factors for driving Human-Tech Skill Complementarity (WP3)
• Drive changes across how technologies are designed, developed and integrated across industries and organisations to deliver on greater productivity, better work and resilient industries (WP4)
• Scale the outcomes of TechConnect for continued development of the Human-Tech Skill Complementarities to become the foundation for future methods of upskilling, training and research that will result in significant reassessment of our approaches to technologies and human skills (WP5)

Research groups at MDU

Digma External link.

Center for Welfare Change