Abstract
How could a university hospital department turn a dismal situation in the wake of the implementation of an Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) into what the department itself called a ‘success’? The EHR, called the Healthcare Platform, was acquired to integrate a fragmented EHR landscape thus enabling easier exchange of data and streamlined administrative processes. However, the implementation entailed lower productivity, more data work for physicians and a deterioration of their cooperation with medical secretaries, whose work was to be deskilled and automated. We analyse the department’s response to this situation through the concept of ‘repair’ which concerns both the social and the technical. In the end, the medical secretaries re-affirmed their role as skilled data workers despite the agenda of deskilling and automation embedded in the plans of the implementation organisation and the EHR’s design. We propose to see this as empowerment through repair. The crucial elements in this process were proactive management, a constructive narrative, socio-technical repair, and skill and expertise. Our contribution is two-fold: We suggest how a strategy to deskill and automate a data work profession can be countered; and we contribute to the repair literature repair by showing how repair can be an act of empowerment.
Recommended Citation
Bossen, Claus Mr and Holten Møller, Naja, "REPAIR AS EMPOWERMENT. How a data work profession asserted its position against deskilling and automation" (2025). SJIS Preprints (Forthcoming). 8.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/sjis_preprints/8