Collaborative technologies mediating Shared Medical Decision: implications for collaboration.
Appropriation of Technologies. Collaborative Technologies. Collaboration. Shared Medical Decision.
Internet-based social platforms have favored collaboration, as well as sharing and interaction, and are being appropriated in the dimensions of human activity in its most diverse contexts, including in the health area, with repercussions on the activities, roles and skills of health-care professionals and peers. Within this context, there is Shared Medical Decision, a multidimensional process seen as a resource that leads to the reduction of inequality of information, of influence between doctors and patients, and, on the other hand, the Internet exposes scientific information to these actors, building a conjuncture of benefits and damages. Therefore, the procedure does not seem to follow this new dynamic, leaving a gap in the factors that influence clinical decision. Thus, this thesis analyzed the implications caused by collaboration, intermediated by virtual social networks, in the Shared Medical Decision Making process, and whether they bring a contemporary design to the clinical treatment decision process. This investigation was based on some theoretical contributions from the Adaptive Structuring Theory, related to the appropriation of technologies and the i3C model of interactive collaboration. Then, adopting a qualitative, exploratory-descriptive approach, 20 physicians and 14 patients from the municipality of Aracaju/SE were interviewed. After coding and categorizing the data provided, it was possible to list and discuss the profile of the appropriation of social media in the locus of this research, which is configured as stable, confirming the processes of interaction and communication between doctors and patients permeated by social media, validating the presence of collaboration permeated by collaborative technologies, in addition to suggesting new behaviors for the category Coordination, perceived in this research as self-managed, and for Cooperation, which had intensified interactive behaviors between doctors and patients, and thus presenting the interactive collaboration framework for the realization of the Shared Medical Decision, which describes the reality of these dimensions in practice. The idea was to propose, from the reality found, an articulation of theoretical perspectives within the field of Administration and Health, establishing connections that seek to integrate epistemologically and methodologically issues related to interactive collaboration in Shared Medical Decision Making, since Information Systems researchers are examining the use of technology in different personal and social contexts.