Tera Reynolds Presentation

Tera Reynolds will give the talk, "Improving the Design and Implementation of Technologies that Support the Independent and Collaborative Health Information Work of Patients and Healthcare Providers."

Abstract: Technologies such as patient portals and COVID-19 Contact Tracing applications that connect and support the independent and collaborative health information work of individuals (e.g., patients, general public/citizens) and health professionals (e.g., doctors, public health practitioners) are becoming more common due to rapidly evolving health, technology, and policy landscapes. However, despite their potential benefits, the uptake and use of many of these technologies have not been as high as expected or hoped. Through my research, I aim to address this gap by understanding how these technologies can better meet users’ and potential users’ needs and expectations, as well as identifying barriers at multiple ecological levels and how these barriers can be effectively addressed. In this talk, I will focus on my research related to the design and implementation of technologies that connect patients and healthcare providers. In particular, I will highlight the patient work that is often required to engage with and understand complex health data outside of formal interactions with health professionals in order for patients to be active participants in their care, their support needs while doing this work, and how technologies such as patient portals and Apple Health Records can be improved to better support this work.

Tera Reynolds is a PhD candidate in the Informatics Department at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). Her research interests lie at the intersection of health informatics, human-computer interaction, and computer-supported cooperative work. She takes a socio-technical lens to understand how we can improve the design and implementation of technologies that connect, facilitate interaction, and support the independent and collaborative health information work of individuals (e.g., patients, general public/citizens) and health professionals (e.g., doctors, public health practitioners). Examples of such technologies include patient portals, Apple Health Records, and COVID-19 Contact Tracing applications. Reynolds is particularly interested in examining how we can mitigate the risk of these technologies exacerbating health disparities by providing another advantage to already advantaged groups. She has been a GAANN Fellow in Socially-Responsible AI since 2019 and has also received the Fred M. Tongue Endowed Graduate Award in ICS. Her research has been published in top-tier health informatics and human-computer interaction journals and conferences, including the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA), JAMIA Open, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Annual Symposium. In 2020, she received a student paper award from the AMIA Consumer and Pervasive Health Working Group.

Prior to entering the PhD program at UCI, Reynolds earned a BA in biology from Lawrence University, an MPH in epidemiology and international health from Boston University, and an MA in information from the University of Michigan. She also worked as a program manager in the public health sector for several years and was a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa.

Meeting ID:  861 1597 8868
Password: 655317

Questions? Contact Lori Kelso