From Warfare to Healthcare: One Technologist’s Journey
2:00-3:30 pm on Friday, November 18, 2005
Indiana University Bloomington, Herman B. Wells Library, Room LI001
Kay Connelly
Department of Computer Science
School of Informatics
Indiana University Bloomington
ABSTRACT
Typical Computer Science education focuses on the technical and often ignores the social and ethical implications of the technology. Technology, however, does not exist in a vacuum. This talk begins with my personal journey from working on high performance networking environments for DARPA, to using technology to improve healthcare. Even within the discipline of healthcare, design choices have important social consequences. Early research in Health Informatics focused on integrating technology into medical environments to support health professionals. Focusing on the health professional, however, continues the power imbalance that already exists between patient and doctor. In the SURG lab, we are developing technologies to empower patients to manage their own health. This talk describes one such effort to design technological interventions for a patient group that would not traditionally be considered viable technology adopters because of their socio-economic class.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Dr. Kay Connelly has been an assistant professor in the Computer Science department at Indiana University since 2003, where she leads the Security for Ubiquitous Resources Group (SURG). She is an associate director for the Center For Applied Cybersecurity Research and a member of the Pervasive Technology Labs. Her research interests include ubiquitous computing, health informatics, HCI, privacy and security. She is especially interested in user acceptance of ubiquitous computing technologies, and how acceptance is affected by such issues as control, convenience, personal motivation and privacy. She received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, in 2003.
