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How Digitisation changes healthcare working

New DFG funded project by Professor Christoph Rosenkranz (et al.)

Drei Krankenhausmitarbeiter*innen um ein Patientenbett (im Aufwachraum), davon eine Schwester mit einem tablet.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) has decided to launch the research project "Digital Transformation in Health Care: Theoretical Perspectives and Conceptualisation of Digitisation Effects on Human Work in Health Care". The topic is highly up-to-date, as the rise of personalised medicine is currently changing the working practices of healthcare professionals such as doctors, nurses or pharmacists worldwide. Advanced digital technologies from the fields of machine learning, artificial intelligence and process automation make this development possible. The Project is funded within the DFG priority programme "Digitisation of the Working World".

Prof. Dr Christoph Rosenkranz from the Cologne Institute for Information Systems (CIIS) of the WiSo Faculty, Prof. Dr Ali Sunyaev (Institute for Applied Computer Science and Formal Description Methods, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and the Medical Clinic I of the University Hospital of Cologne will carry out the project over the next three years.

One of the currently most striking examples of increasing digitalisation and digital transformation, with supposedly profound individual, organisational and social effects, is the field of personalised medicine - the tailor-made approach to the treatment of patients, which can be seen for example in the molecular analysis of genes, proteins and metabolites that guide decisions in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

The project will investigate the impact of digitisation on the work of health professionals, and in doing so fills a research gap. Christoph Rosenkranz, who holds the Chair of Business Informatics and Integrated Information Systems at the WiSo Faculty, summarises: "In our research project we want to investigate how digitisation is changing the working environments of healthcare professionals and how digital technologies can be used more successfully and in the interest of all parties involved. After all, digital technologies will influence all facets of the current care model in the future."