JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

In the wake of the unexpected outbreak of Corona virus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and the calls for physical distancing, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly essential to augment human efforts and enhance efficiencies of work activities in the healthcare sector. In hospital settings, the interplay between human agency and technology performativity is critical to the success or failure of ICTs usage in routine practice; this is rarely explored when designing for the sub-Saharan Africa contexts.

Objective:

The objective of this paper was to explore how quality of service delivery and job performance are influenced by technology-enabled work activities of healthcare professionals at points-of-care. The study focused on how healthcare professionals performed the tasks of their work activities, challenges of technology-enabled work activities and the factor that influence the effective use of health ICTs.

Methods:

The authors assumed an interpretivist perspective to understand the socially constructed realities of healthcare professionals at points-of-care in a hospital setting. A qualitative service design strategy was adopted to engage healthcare professionals in co-design sessions. Open-ended questions were used engage 12 participants including eight doctors and four nurses to get insights on their work activities, health ICTs being used and the enabling or inhibiting contextual conditions that may influence the quality of service delivery. Ethical concerns about safety and privacy of participants were addressed accordingly and a thematic analysis was used to sort the textual data.

Results:

The findings suggest that the attributes of human agency and technology features that drive technology performativity influences the transformation of human-machine interactions and ultimately, the quality of healthcare service delivered at points-of-care. A major contribution is the breakdown of why an interplay exists between human agency and technology performativity.

Conclusions:

The way healthcare professionals perform the tasks of their work activities at points-of-care should determine the types of health ICTs and its design features for service delivery. Healthcare professionals consider the value-added benefits of the automation of their work activities to determine the satisfaction of their job performance, quality of service delivery, the continued and effective use of health ICTs otherwise they eventually discard the technologies.