Piers Hollott
Health Informatics - Critical Theory - Emerging Technology
Health Informatics - Critical Theory - Emerging Technology
Over the last decade, I have been deeply engaged with the Healthcare landscape in Canada, both as a software engineer and as a standards advocate. A fundamental issue in Healthcare is how to share information in a timely and appropriate way, while balancing Privacy and Security concerns.
My approach to literature is based in structuralist narratology: how does discourse influence language and vice versa; how do narrative elements relate? This discipline overlaps with Healthcare: when a patient falls between the cracks in the system, this is a failure of narrative as much as process or technology.
I advocate for better User Experience through client-side and mobility frameworks. As the web moves from desktop to mobile, it evolves from a document-sharing platform to an application platform. Key influences on this evolution are Social Repositories and Web Component platforms.
Web 2.0 emerged out of a combination of new platforms and approaches, like 'blogging, folksonomy and Ajax; however, Web 2.0 is still at its core based on a document standard, HTML. With the release of HTML5 and the upcoming Web Components specification, the W3C and modern browsers that implement these specifications are moving beyond the document paradigm to produce a first class application platform. You can see some of these features in client-side frameworks like AngularJS, and Mozilla Brick and Google Polymer, which promise great things, but they are going to need to build the support of a developer community.
Evangelism, coordination, and interdisciplinary knowledge sharing are crucial to the success of this community.
In the cultural philosophy of Deleuze & Guattari, the rhizome represents an approach which allows a multiplicity of non-hierarchical entry and exit points for interpretation. These repositories in turn represent my attempts to create multiple entry points into an interdisciplinary field of study, a social and narrative approach to health information and open data. Likewise, the folded plateau is a common theme in Deleuze & Guattari's writing, which I am here simplifying to represent the way web development environments like jsFiddle are often folded into four quadrants, as you will see.
What I feel is important here is that social repositories like jsFiddle and GitHub extend the notion that contributed so much to the success of the WorldWide Web, the ability to "View Page Source" and see how a page was created. By storing these samples on GitHub and piping them through jsFiddle, they become wholly tangible. Nothing is hidden.
As you explore these samples, take time to look at the underlying HTML, JavaScript and CSS; keep in mind that what is noteworthy is not how complicated they are, but how simple.
A library I am developing for mobile health, comprised of templates and code samples of social health aspects like Questionnaires and Care Plans.
Literary samples using AngularJS Web Components, an emerging approach in web applications which blurs the line between author and developer.
These samples use d3.js (Data Driven Documents) to show how we can provide better access to information by exposing standardized data for visualization.
I work in Health Informatics, but I also have a background in Cultural Theory, and am moving towards a narrative approach to information exchange.
This project site provides context about several projects I am developing related to accessing health information, open data, and user experience.
How as individuals do we each tell our health story, mediated through technology?