A Salutogenic Approach for Collaboration in Health and Technology

Through collaboration, health services and health-promoting environments can be influenced by patients, health professionals, and stakeholders. Antonovsky’s concept of salutogenesis includes the promotion of a sense of coherence, where the feeling of meaningfulness and people’s ability to influence their own situation is central. These concepts were the units of analysis in this embedded case study, including an educational project analyzed in relation to relevant research projects. The educational project was the development of a new master course, “Interaction in health and technology,” for students with different background in health-related education, including radiography, occupational therapy, biomedicine, biomedical laboratory science, artificial intelligence, and design. Through a qualitative content analysis, pitfalls and success criteria for collaboration in health and technology within a salutogenic theoretical framework were identified. These included user understanding of diagnostic value by artificial intelligence through visualization, user journeys for better health services, patient opinions about assistive technology, and developing understandable AI models. An interdisciplinary understanding of a sense of coherence as described in this study can strengthen collaboration in health and technology. The results of the current case study show also the potential for replication of the approach in different sites in various countries.