Collective activities in a technology-mediated medical team. An analysis of epidemiological alert management

Abstract

We conducted an exploratory study of a complex and dynamic medical activity, namely the collective management of an epidemiological alert situation. With a view to improving our knowledge of how this activity is managed, we set up simulated situations of epidemiological alerts. A multidisciplinary medical team was assisted by a decision-support system called ASTER and we recorded a set of systematised observations of human–human and human–machine interactions. Participants were physicians belonging to the Department of Epidemiology at the French Army's Institute of Tropical Medicine. After presenting the epidemiological domain and our theoretical approach, we describe the simulated situation and the communication dataset we collected and analysed, applying the EORCA method. Finally, in our discussion of the results, we suggest how communication could be enhanced between technology-mediated teams in complex and dynamic situations.

Keywords:

• complex and dynamic situations
• medical decision-making
• epidemiological alert management
• decision support system
• team activities
• distributed cognition
• health information technology
• CSCW
• task analysis
• cognitive mode

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