TEACHING

Doing Field Research on Information Infrastructures - The National Medication Plan of Denmark

SWS & Credits

This course is a research seminar with excursions

Instructor: Kai Reimers
CP (Credit Points): 10
Maximum number of participants: 16
Language: English

Programs

Objectives

Students will learn how to conduct field research on the topic of large information systems (information infrastructures). In particular, they will become familiar with the case study research method and learn how to collect data through in-depth interviews.

Contents

The so-called digital transformation of the healthcare sector is presently a top priority of many national governments and the subject of numerous projects and conferences. One area of particular concern is the risk that results from medication therapies. If a patient takes three or more drugs, the risk of harmful and unintended but avoidable interactions and side effects becomes quite significant. Often, the main problem for healthcare professionals is simply to know which drugs a patient takes. This problem is addressed through the concept of the medication plan. There are several possibilities of ‘digitalizing’ the medication plan; one, currently also pursued in Germany, is the creation of a national registry of prescribing and dispensing events to which all healthcare professionals participating in a patient’s medication therapy have access. However, such a registry can only create a list of drugs that have been prescribed and dispensed to a patient, it cannot say which drugs a patient actually takes. Therefore, the creation of a medication plan, and its clinical and pharmaceutical evaluation, is still necessary. As of yet, it is not quite clear how this should or could be done.

One country which had developed such a system many years ago is Denmark (Kildemoes et al. 2011; Hostenkamp 2017). This research seminar will focus on the Danish medication plan. In particular, we will study how the medication plan is used in the everyday practices of GPs (general practitioners), pharmacies, and hospitals. Special attention will be given to the question of how medication plans are kept up to date, a process which has been identified by Reimers and Luo (2023) as potentially afflicted by a free-rider problem.

In the summer of 2023, a small group of students has already explored this question in Copenhagen, but access to the empirical field has turned out to be difficult. Therefore, this year we will chose a rural area and also invest more time in the preparation of the field study. To allow for more preparation, the excursion, which is a mandatory and essential part of this research seminar, cannot take place during the excursion week but is planned for late in June.

In practical terms, the seminar will initially focus on required techniques for conducting case study research, based on Robert Yin’s textbook (Yin 2014). In parallel, and as an opportunity for immediate practical application of these techniques, students will study the Danish healthcare system and its approach towards digitalization. This phase of the seminar will end with the presentation of the research design of each team. The next phase is then concerned with data collection, initially based on desktop research. During the excursion, all participants will then conduct face-to-face interviews with relevant persons in Denmark. Depending on the chosen research site(s) and the number of students, seminar participants may stay in one location during this time or spread out across the country. Subsequently, participants will work on their final report and, for this purpose, continuously discuss upcoming issues in the regular meetings. After the final presentation there will be one more meeting to discuss revisions based on feedback on this presentation, before reports are due one week later.

Regular meetings with mandatory in-person participation: Wednesday, 10:30 to 12:00 a.m.

Course Dates

Project

 

Curriculum:

April 10: Kick-off

April 17: Case Study Research, Chapter 1

April 18: Case Study Research, Chapter 2

May 8: Case Study Research, Chapter 3

May 15: Case Study Research, Chapter 4

May 29: Case Study Research, Chapter 5; presentation of research design (first exam)

June 5: Discussion of findings of desktop research

June 12: Discussion of findings of desktop research

June 17 – June 21: Excursion; in-person interviews in Denmark

June 26: Presentation of report outline

July 3: Discussion of findings and report writing problems

July 10: Presentation of findings (exam)

July 17: Discussion of revisions based on feedback on presentation

July 25: Report due

References

Hostenkamp, G. 2017. “Die Einführung des elektronischen Medikationsplans: Was Deutschland von Dänemark lernen kann,” Gesundheitsökonomie & Qualitätsmanagement (22:01), pp. 54-60 (doi: 10.1055/s-0042-113151).

Kildemoes, H. W., Sørensen, H. T., and Hallas, J. 2011. “The Danish National Prescription Registry,” Scandinavian Journal of Public Health (39:7 Suppl), pp. 38-41 (doi: 10.1177/1403494810394717).

Reimers, K., and Luo, Y. 2023. “On the Economic Nature of Medical Information: Implications for the Development of Information Infrastructures in the Healthcare Sector,” in Proceedings of the 56th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Jan. 3-6, 2023, pp. 2809-2817. (available online at: https://hdl.handle.net/10125/102977

Yin, R. K. 2014. Case Study Research: Design and Methods, Los Angeles et al.: Sage.

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