Month: February 2026

In a recent study, Anna Kharko, Josefin Hagström, Saija Simola, Åsa Cajander, Charlotte Blease, and Maria Hägglund analyse how gender is associated with patient experiences of electronic health records across Norway, Sweden, and Finland.

Drawing on responses from 27,038 patient portal users, the study shows that women use electronic health records more frequently than men and tend to rate more portal functions as useful.

While positive experiences were reported at similar levels, a higher proportion of women reported very negative experiences. Gender was associated with usefulness ratings for almost all functions, except contact with provider.

How might we interpret this pattern?

One possible explanation is that women generally have more frequent contact with healthcare services. Women also generally have more frequent and diverse interactions with healthcare services across the life course. This may increase both their need for, and engagement with, digital health services. My guess is that higher usage also increases the likelihood of encountering inconsistencies, errors, or confusing documentation, which may help explain why women report more negative experiences.

Another interpretation is that women may take on more caregiving responsibilities and administrative health-related tasks for family members. This could make functions such as error notification and certificate management more salient and valuable. My guess is that women’s broader coordination role in healthcare interactions may shape how they evaluate usefulness.

Overall, the findings suggest that gender is not merely a demographic variable but may reflect differences in health practices, expectations, and responsibilities. As patient portals become more personalized, considering these patterns may support more responsive and inclusive digital health design.

In 2024, we organized a workshop at NordiCHI on design methods in connected health. We had strong participation, and a wide range of connected health projects were presented and discussed. The workshop was structured to foster collaborative reflection on how different design approaches are used in real projects and what can be learned from them.

Following the workshop, we continued working with the material that emerged from the discussions and presentations. The submitted abstracts and workshop dialogues formed the basis for a joint paper, which has now been published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.

The paper synthesizes insights from six diverse connected health projects and highlights both opportunities and challenges experienced in designing connected health systems:

• On the opportunity side, it identifies areas such as improving data integration and usability, enhancing collaboration across stakeholders, using iterative and user-centered design processes, addressing complexity in socio-technical systems, focusing on sustainability, and adopting digital infrastructures that support seamless communication.
• At the same time, the paper also points out persistent challenges that practitioners face, including information exchange and interoperability, navigating ethical and legal requirements, understanding design and evaluation standards, ensuring trustworthiness and quality of data, and involving stakeholders effectively.

These insights come directly from workshop discussions and collective reflection across multiple projects. The paper brings together varied experiences to show what practitioners encounter when working with connected health systems in practice. This makes the findings relevant for researchers, designers, and policymakers interested in the practical side of digital health design.

The publication is timely because connected health technologies are becoming increasingly embedded in health care delivery and everyday care. Understanding both opportunities and barriers in their design — especially from real projects — helps ensure that these systems are usable, sustainable, and aligned with stakeholder needs.

We are pleased to see the workshop discussions evolve into a peer-reviewed publication, and we hope the paper is useful to others working on connected health design and implementation.

Blog post written by Shweta Premanandan

This week we spent two focused and inspiring days at Krusenberg Herrgård, just outside Uppsala, working together on the final steps of the AROA project, funded by AFA försälring. Krusenberg, with its calm surroundings and views over Lake Mälaren, offered an ideal setting for concentrated work, reflection, and discussion.

The environment clearly did its job. Several of us kept working well into the night, some until 01.00, others until 03.00, driven not by deadlines but by an overload of ideas, discussions, and theoretical connections that we simply did not want to interrupt.

The workshop focused on the last phase of AROA: synthesising empirical findings and theory into the project’s final theoretical framework. AROA explores how AI, automation, and robotics at work influence work engagement and socio-technical work dynamics. The project takes a human-centred and socio-technical perspective, aiming to develop a framework that can help identify opportunities for work engagement in AI-supported workplaces. Our discussions revolved around aligning concepts from work engagement research, sociotechnical systems theory, and empirical insights from multiple sectors into a coherent whole.

Participants in the workshop were Maria Normark, Jessica Lindblom, Andreas Bergqvist, and Åsa Cajander.

Alongside long work sessions, there was also time for shared fika, informal conversations, and moments of pause – important ingredients when ideas are being shaped and reshaped.

The Krusenberg days marked a milestone for AROA, and we now move forward with a clear sense that the pieces of the framework are coming together.

This blog post is written by Jana-Sophie Effert, PhD candidate at TU Dortmund University.

A month back home in Germany: time enough to let impressions settle, but not quite enough for them to fade. After three months with Uppsala University’s HTO Research Group, I’m now back here on the blog to reflect on what those weeks have meant for me and my PhD journey. Since everyone at home keeps asking me about my experiences anyway, it feels like the perfect opportunity to bundle and share them here.

First things first: What I miss: The calmness of Swedish everyday life, being surrounded by nature, and that special kind of adventure that comes with living in another country. Further of course: colleagues, cinnamon buns and the HCI environment.

What I’m happy to have back: Of course, there’s comfort in returning home: subsidized student lunch options (no more microwavable meal-prep experiments!), being back in teaching, reconnecting with friends and family: simply enjoying the convenience of familiar surroundings. Yet even here, traces of Sweden remain; small habits and ideas keep resurfacing during daily work.

What I learned (even if it’s really hard to grasp)

1) Networking Across Fields

I was fortunate enough to join several events during my stay – from the DOME meeting on digital medical records and e-health services to national conferences on equal opportunities and social innovation in health. These experiences taught me how valuable spontaneous connections can be: finding overlaps between projects, brainstorming across disciplines, staying up-to-date with neighboring research fields. Networking turned out not just as professional exchange but as genuine inspiration.

2) Teaching From New Perspectives

One highlight was giving two guest lectures within HCI courses: From human-centered to intersectional design, another on work systems – socio-technical aspects of (in)accessible technologies. Sharing insights from rehabilitation sciences while learning how students approach inclusion through an HCI lens was a helpful angle and reminded me how much I like interacting with students‘ perspectives.

3) Feedback and Insights for my PhD Project

My research focuses on technologies supporting people with disabilities in work systems and their transitions into employment. During my stay, I not only had the chance to get feedback on my concrete approach and findings, but I also had the chance for job shadowing at Daglig Verksamhet in Sala. Observing inclusive practices firsthand offered new comparative insights for my project. These experiences helped refine questions about participation and technology use within real work environments.

4) Local Academic Routines

Academic life at Uppsala University left its mark: I participated in regular seminars, open group discussions, collaborative meetings. One thought that stuck with me is seeing this PhD journey again through its original purpose: becoming a “critical thinker,” not just an expert within a narrow niche.

Looking Ahead

Three months were certainly a good enough time to fill my head with thoughts and ideas. Now comes the part where these insights need sorting and weaving into ongoing projects here at TU Dortmund. Some collaborations initiated at UU are already continuing:

• Participation & Accessibility: Together we’re developing a scoping review exploring how people with cognitive accessibility needs experience their involvement in Human-Centered Design or Co-Design activities.
• Sustainability & Accessibility: We’re exchanging perspectives on sustainability and accessibility as value-based features of software development.

One thing is certain: I’m eager to return someday to this wonderful Swedish town, both professionally and personally. To anyone considering spending time with the HTO group: do it! Looking forward to being back, continuing working together and eventually share some joint research results on this blog 😊

Last December, Sita Vriend was given the opportunity to visit Uppsala University through support from the Equal Opportunities Fund.

My research focuses on human-centered uncertainty visualization, an area concerned with how uncertainty, which is all around us, is communicated through visual representations. Common examples include weather forecasts that show the probability of rain or storm predictions that visualize the possible paths a storm might take. The goal of my work is to better understand how users perceive such visualizations and how they can be designed more effectively. Along the way, I have become something of a data and statistics enthusiast. I enjoy the process of exploring data and creating clear, compelling figures.

Hence, I got asked to collaborate with Åsa Cajander and Jonathan Källbäcker to analyse data collected as part of TARA project (The Impact of Automation, Robotization and AI on the Work Environment of Airport Ground Staff). While I am experienced in data analysis and visualization, I was less familiar with the specific application context. This made the collaboration particularly valuable, as it provided opportunities to discuss unexpected patterns and oddities in the data. Jonathan was able to contextualize these findings by drawing on insights from interviews conducted during earlier research.

Our collaboration is ongoing. Additional data will be collected, and the analysis is still in progress, laying the groundwork for continued joint research in the future.

Sita Vriend, M.Sc.
Doctoral Researcher
Visualization Research Center (VISUS)
Weiskopf Group