Activity-Driven Computing Infrastructure – Pervasive Computing in Healthcare

In many work settings, and especially in healthcare, work is distributed among many cooperating actors, who are constantly moving around and are frequently interrupted. In line with other researchers, we use the term pervasive computing to describe a computing infrastructure that supports work where users access a dynamic range of computing and software devices, where users can shift between devices, and where users move around while preserving their working environment. This paper describes our design of a pervasive activity-driven computing infrastructure. The main tenet in this approach is to preserve a user’s computational working context enabling him to shift between different devices while on the move and enabling him to interrupt and return to work-activities fluently. Furthermore, the infrastructure contains agents that propose new activities based on the user’s current context. This activity-driven computing infrastructure has been designed and developed in close cooperation with a large Danish hospital and is being evaluated in a hospital setting.