Transforming communities of practice through a virtual ‘Health Village’

Digital technologies are considered vital to transform the quality and accessibility of health care services (WHO, 2019). This study explores the creation of online specialized health care services through a digital platform called the ‘Health Village’. The purpose of the ‘Health Village’ is to connect the needs of the users with an interactive virtual environment. In our research, we interviewed and observed the actors, including both health care and IT experts as well as patients, involved in creating online content for the ‘Health Village’. We subsequently analysed the importance of voluntary and motivated participation of members; the role played by leaders and facilitators; and the provision of appropriate ICT infrastructure in their work. We discovered that although the intended strategy was to create content for the ‘Health Village’, the situated activity of building a digital platform empowered the actors to transform their communities of practices into extended, interacting social worlds with actors who they had not previously considered as part of their community of practice. In the end, the digital platform transformed the practitioners’ work to enable a more inclusive community of practices of various actors from different social worlds.