In this project, we investigate the new knowledge and skills required to work with data, and the impact of this new kind of data work for professions. Healthcare been rapidly and profoundly digitalized in the last decades and huge amounts of data is produced. This requires work, and that work is often overlooked in the grand narratives of ‘datafication’ and Big Data. We aim to make data work more visible.

The project’s points of departure are critical data studies, socio-technical studies of work and the sociology of profession. These approach emphasizes data workers’ contextual knowledge and the skill required to generate and make data useful. We apply qualitative,

ethnographic research and document studies to generate our research data.

 

We have three subprojects, which focus on the following:

 

1) A data work profession (medical secretaries)

2) A data work site (a Business Intelligence unit)

3) An overview of new data work in healthcare in Denmark.

 

With the project, we aim to contribute to research and society by making the humanistic aspects of data work visible; providing analyses of how data work changes professions in healthcare; and informing healthcare stakeholders about the new skill requirements in healthcare at a time of datafication.