The Multi-Disciplinary Development of Collaborative Grids: The Social Shaping of a Grid for Healthcare

Grid computing promises a range of industries the ability to distribute and share computing resources “on tap” and to provide transparent communication and collaboration between groups and across borders. Yet developing and implementing such complex and interrelated technology requires collaborative working among a range of disciplinary groups and organisations. Within this paper we present a case study of the development of HealthscanGrid within the medical community. The HealthscanGrid project aims to deploy a European database of mammograms by using the Grid to facilitate collaboration and communication between clinicians across the EU. The case study, through the lens of social constructionism, is explored in an attempt to surface the way such systems are developed as a collaboration among multi-disciplinary groups and how such collaboration shapes the nature of the technology deployed. We present this debate, in the context of debates within management studies literature on the nature of multiand inter-disciplinary research project. The paper concludes by reflecting on the role of Grids “Virtual Organizations” in the debate over relevance of Grids to practice.