Using Activity Theory Successfully in Healthcare: A Systematic Review of the Theory's Key Challenges to Date
Open accessAbstract
Collaborative tools in organizations become more and more apparent. These tools are being realized by novel information technology. Particularly, healthcare is a fast-evolving industry in terms of information system innovation. As the evolution is fast, and new systems are always error-prone due to socio-technical complexity, new analysis tools and methods for quality assurance must be adapted. In earlier research, we proposed Activity Theory as a fitting analysis tool due to the reason that it has advantages over other HCI theories, such as Actor-Network Theory or Distributed Cognition. However, several limitations became apparent during our studies. In the present work, we are conducting a systematic literature review of activity theoretical limitations and challenges to provide design guidelines for an improved version of Activity Theory. These implications can help to develop more advanced Activity Theory concepts and contributions; which in turn can improve the analysis results of socio-technical systems in healthcare.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Additional searches on Science Direct, the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Springer Link, and Web of Science did not produce additional sources.
“To ensure coverage, we also performed these searches on Science Direct, the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Springer Link, and Web of Science (cf.[52]).The searches did not result in additional sources.”
From Fourth-Generation Activity Theory: An Integrative Literature Review and Implications for Professional Communication (2019) · cites this paper as [52]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Acting with technology: Activity theory and interaction design
Kaptelinin, V., & Nardi, B. (2007) · First Monday · doi:10.5210/fm.v12i4.1772 · Cited by 1,647 · see citing works
Working Alone Together: Coworking as Emergent Collaborative Activity
Spinuzzi, C. (2012) · Journal of Business and Technical Communication · doi:10.1177/1050651912444070 · Cited by 764 · see citing works
Expansive Visibilization of Work: An Activity-Theoretical Perspective
Engeström, Y. (1999) · Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) · doi:10.1023/a:1008648532192 · Cited by 492 · see citing works
Activity Theory and Distributed Cognition: Or What Does CSCW Need to DO with Theories?
Halverson, C. A. (2002) · Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) · doi:10.1023/a:1015298005381 · Cited by 283 · see citing works
Physical and Virtual Tools: Activity Theory Applied to the Design of Groupware
Fjeld, M., Lauche, K., Bichsel, M., Voorhorst, F., Krueger, H., & Rauterberg, M. (2002) · Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) · doi:10.1023/a:1015269228596 · Cited by 168 · cited 3× · see citing works
“Another limitation of AT is its accessibility for new practitioners and its (generally spoken) complex and fuzzy philosophical concepts [10, 14, 38].”
BackgroundActivity Theory and System Design: A View from the Trenches
Collins, P., Shukla, S., & Redmiles, D. (2002) · Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) · doi:10.1023/a:1015219918601 · Cited by 90 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Overall, many researchers stated that the notion of “object” in AT is often misunderstood [3, 9, 33].”
Background
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Spinuzzi, C., & Guile, D. (2019) · 2019 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (ProComm) · doi:10.1109/procomm.2019.00012 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
- Authors
- Wiser, F., Durst, C., & Wickramasinghe, N.
- Affiliations
- Technische Universität Braunschweig (DE)
- Ansbach University of Applied Sciences (DE)
- Deakin University (AU)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
- Published
- 2019
- ISSN
- 1530-1605 (ISSN-L)
- 2572-6862
- OpenAlex
- W2930327792
- Cited by
- 9
- References
- 6
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 0.32
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- Locations
- Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Journal of the Association for Information Systems (submittedVersion)
- ScholarSpace (University of Hawaii at Manoa) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (02K16C190)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Information Systems Theories and Implementation
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Innovative Education and Learning Practices
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Usability and User Interface Design
- Keywords
- activity theory, health information systems, socio-technical systems, groupware, quality assurance, design guidelines, actor-network theory, distributed cognition
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
