Project Description

The vision and key objective of ICU4Covid is to deliver intensive care medicine fit for the fight against COVID-19 to the EU citizen and the health workforce rapidly and at scale by clinically validating and deploying the Cyber-Physical-system for Tele- and Intensive Care Medicine (CPS4TIC). The CPS4TIC consists of a telemedicine cockpit, telemedicine consoles at each peripheral hospital, a connector platform and smart bedside hubs including robotic arm at the bedsides of both, the central telemonitoring clinics and the peripheral telemonitored hospitals.

Our role as Science and Technology Studies scholars is to accompany the process of implementation of new technological possibilities in the complex work environment of an ICU.

Our basic understanding of the ICU is a successful asssemblage - the bringing together - of diverse human actors, from doctors, over nurses, to patients, but also of a set of technologies, institutional support structures as well as ethical and regulatory frameworks. Thus, when introducing the above mentioned technologies into ICU units, we speak of the need to re-assemble the ICU, i.e. to find a robust arrangement of the technological, the social and the legal. This demands reconsidering relationships, routines, the basis on which decisions are built and many more.

To assure a successful implementation process and a sustainable functioning of the CPS4TIC, it is essential to carefully address the social as well as the societal dimensions of such a digital transformation and potential socio-cultural differences across sites. This is done by using a co-design/co-creation approach, i.e. engaging with medical actors and users along the implementation process. The aim is to incorporate their needs and concerns and make the necessary adaptations. Such an approach assures both that the technical innovations and the ways in which they are implemented are adapted to the social environment (the hospital/health care system & culture) into which they are to be integrated and that they make sense to those work with or encounter them. The whole consortium as well as different stakeholders will be engaged in this co-design/co-creation process.