In the fall of 2021, the Nordwit team at Uppsala University will arrange a course at advanced (PhD and Master’s) level on gender and digital technologies in healthcare. The course will run on Zoom during Tuesday and Thursday mornings in October. The primary target group is advanced students in medicine and care related disciplines, but other disciplines are not excluded.
Caring professions are becoming increasingly digitalized. People who chose to be nurses, doctors and other kinds of healthcare professionals find themselves increasingly interacting with digital technologies instead of directly with patients. This development is experienced as both good and problematic. However, how gender is intertwined with the entry of computers in healthcare organizations, and how it influences both staff and patients is a topic that is insufficiently discussed.
Our aim with the course is to help and inspire those who plan for a further career in healthcare research and development to consider the potential gender aspects of the digital transformation that is taking place. We do not expect particular prior knowledge on gender issues, but start with discussing gender in healthcare organizations and gender and technology more in general, before turning to the actual topic of the course: digital tools that are used by healthcare staff. Our guest lecturers come from Sweden, Norway and Ireland, each representing their particular research areas: gender and AI in healthcare; women, technology and careers in healthcare; implementation of digital health services for carers and cared; gender, age and technology; and gender, ethics and healthcare technology. Taken together these different areas show how gender is relevant in many different ways in the digitalization of healthcare. They are also pointing at a number of issues and aspects that are still waiting for being researched to inform practice, so that digital healthcare will provide effective and empowering tools for different kinds of users.
Åsa Cajander, one of the course leaders is professor at the Institution for information technology, in Human-computer interaction. She does research in relation to ICT and work, mainly health care and the IT systems that connect health care with the patients, and public authorities and their IT systems used for administration of services. In addition to having a gender perspective in her research, Åsa is a gender equality practitioner, being the gender equality adviser to the university vice-chancellor. The other course leader is Minna Salminen-Karlsson, associate professor in Sociology at the Centre for Gender Research. She has researched ICT education and ICT workplaces in a gender perspective, and has also worked as a practitioner, being a gender equality specialist at the university. Their common interest in gender, ICT and work has brought Åsa and Minna together in researching gender aspects in the digitalization of healthcare, from the perspective of healthcare workers.
We look forward to meeting postgraduate students with different experiences and different research interests in the domain of healthcare. The course is free of charge, but the number of places is limited. For those who only want a taster as an eye-opener, the readings and seminar discussions on the course will give 3 ECTS. For those who already want to try their hands on examining a particular issue more in depth, writing a course paper will give additional 2 ECTS.
We are happy to provide more information about the course:
Åsa Cajander, asa.cajander@it.uu.se
Minna Salminen-Karlsson, minna.salminen@gender.uu.se
Registration page to be found here >>
NORDWIT 