Socio-technical challenges in designing a web-based communication platform.

This paper takes a socio-technical perspective to analyze the ongoing practices of making an eHealth infrastructure, namely a web-based communication platform, which aims to improve healthcare delivery in Norway. The platform is planned to support interaction between patients and healthcare providers, patient access to personal health information, and dissemination of health knowledge to the public. The analysis is based on the 'scales of infrastructure' concept found in Information Systems research, which shows the complexity of the design, development and implementation process across three scales of activities for achieving durability: institutionalization, organizing work, and technology enactment. The case analysis brings the non-linearity of the ongoing practices to the foreground, enabling a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between technology design and infrastructural work.