How can the Locales Framework be used as basis for design of collaborative systems in shared health care?

The paper addresses the increasing need for collaboration in the Norwegian health sector, and how collaborative systems can be designed to facilitate exchange and sharing of health information. An upcoming national health reform, the coordination reform, will have focus on how patients can get health services in, or closer to, their homes. The change in the cooperation processes between primary and specialized care will trigger the need for better collaboration platforms. Design of electronic collaboration systems in health care has been challenging, and deployment of existing systems has been slow. This paper addresses how the Locales Framework can be used to do an analysis of the current situation and provide a basis for design of future collaborative systems. The framework seems to be adequate for analysis of collaboration processes in the health sector, and as a basis for establishing general recommendations for design of collaborative systems.