From a distinctly social scientific perspective, the professorship addresses the central question of how digital technologies are transforming, structuring, and reconfiguring health practices in medicine and nursing. Our research focuses in particular on the transformation of decision-making processes, the shifting of professional responsibilities, and the fundamental reshaping of medical and health-related knowledge through digital systems.
 
Theoretically grounded in the sociology of health and illness as well as science and technology studies (STS), the research combines praxeological and materiality-oriented approaches. It independently contributes to the advancement of central debates in digital health research. The research examines how care, prevention, and self-care are influenced by digital technologies and their implications. The professorship combines theory-driven basic research with empirical fieldwork.
 
Digital health technologies are not understood as isolated innovative products or objects of implementation, but as components of complex socio-technical structures that encompass clinical and nursing routines, institutional frameworks, and digital infrastructures in equal measure.

As one of the few professorships with a social science focus in the field of digital health, this professorship occupies a research perspective that has thus far been structurally underrepresented in the German higher education landscape. The social scientific perspective opens up analytical approaches that other disciplines cannot address with this level of depth.
 
Main Areas of Research

1. Medical Practice: The central question here is how digital technologies are changing, structuring, and reconfiguring health practices in medicine and nursing - for example, with regard to decision-making processes, responsibilities, or forms of professional knowledge. How do technologies impact practice, how do they alter established processes in real-world work settings, and what influence do they have on individuals and organizations?
2. Design of Digital Health Technologies: Technology development does not take place in a vacuum. A key focus of our work is understanding how the development of technology is influenced by society and how, for example, discourses shape development processes. We examine which expectations and norms are already “embedded” in the systems during the design phase and how these influence their subsequent application.
3. Implementation and Adoption: Rather than focusing on clinical efficacy or cost-benefit analyses, our research examines the sociotechnical factors that drive the adoption of digital health technologies. 

 
Through our work, we have established a network of relevant stakeholders that also includes practitioners—such as healthcare providers—as well as developers and providers of digital technologies. Methodologically, our work is primarily characterized by qualitative data collection and analysis methods, including workshops, guided interviews, and participatory and co-creative formats.