Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB) 2027

January 3-7, 2027

The Big Island of Hawaii, USA

Sociotechnical Ethnography in Health Informatics:

Bridging Technology, Practice, and Human Experience

Motivation

The ever-increasing integration of computational methods, artificial intelligence and digital health technologies into clinical practice has created the need to understand not just technical performance, but also how these systems function within complex social and organizational contexts. Despite advances in AI and biomedical informatics, a persistent gap remains between technological capabilities and real-world adoption. Sociotechnical ethnography provides a systematic approach to evaluate the impact of technologies on clinical workflows, patient experience, and care delivery, through immersive observation and analysis, providing insights that computational or quantitative approaches alone cannot capture.

Studies such as these rely on more than just EHR data and interviews; they require rich, multimodal data resources that capture the nuances observed during clinical encounters. The development of such resources represents an invaluable opportunity to advance this research; however, these resources remain scarce and underutilized. The Observer Repository (Observer: https://observer.med.upenn.edu/), a rich multimodal data source containing video-recorded clinical visits, along with audio, transcripts and linked EHR data, is one data source developed to address this need. Building on Observer’s success, we are launching the Observer Consortium, an initiative to establish a federated network of scientists and multimodal clinical datasets from partner institutions across the United States and potentially globally.

In this session, we invite submissions that bridge computational methods and ethnographic approaches to understanding healthcare technology in practice. Our focus is on research demonstrating how multimodal data analysis and systematic observation can shed light on the complex relationships between technology, clinical workflows, and human experience. We are particularly interested in multimodal AI applications on and analysis of clinical data (e.g., video, audio, transcription, and EHR data), observational studies of technology implementations, clinical conversation analysis, communication patterns and health equity, and video ethnography. Our session will announce the Observer Consortium and explore opportunities for collaborative research using multimodal clinical data. Our goal is to foster dialogue among computer scientists, informaticians, social scientists, and healthcare practitioners to develop technologies that are technically robust, equitably implemented and grounded in the realities of clinical practice.

Call for Papers

Session Topics

We invite contributions in a broad range of topics applicable to sociotechnical approaches to health informatics.

Examples of topics within the scope of the session, include but are not limited to:

· Computational methods (NLP/ML/AI) or analysis using multimodal clinical data (video, audio, transcript, EHR)

· Computer vision applications in clinical settings

· Integration of multiple data modalities for clinical research

· Ethnographic studies of EHR, clinical decision support, or AI systems

· Observational research on healthcare worker-technology interactions

· Organizational factors affecting technology adoption

· Patient-provider communication patterns

· Impact of technology on clinical communication

· Health equity in digital health technologies

· Methodological innovations in combining computational and ethnographic approaches

· Video ethnography methods in healthcare

· Reproducibility and validation in qualitative health informatics

· Frameworks for responsible sharing and governance of multimodal clinical data

· Infrastructure for shared clinical video data

· Privacy-preserving approaches to multimodal data sharing

Submission Information

Papers are rigorously peer reviewed and are published in an archival proceedings volume.

Please see the PSB format template and instructions for submissions: https://psb.stanford.edu/psb-online/psb-submit/

Papers must be submitted to the PSB paper management system

Important Dates:

· August 3, 2026*: Paper submissions due

· September 8, 2026: Notification of paper acceptance

· October 1, 2026*: Camera-ready accepted paper deadline

· December 1, 2026*: Abstract/Poster submission deadline

*at 11:59 PM PT

Session Organizers

Kevin B. Johnson, MD, MS, FACMI

University of Pennsylvania

Kevin.johnson1@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

Andrea L. Hartzler, PhD, FACMI

University of Washington

andreah@uw.edu

Karen O’Connor, MS

University of Pennsylvania

karoc@pennmedicine.upenn.edu