DITES | Research Agenda

Our research and development projects touch on situational, interactive and societal aspects of the influence of digital technologies.

On the one hand, our interdisciplinary work focuses on analyzing technologies that have already been adapted in the fields of social work, health and care. On the other hand, we are interested in researching technical innovations and new areas of application of existing technologies for other needs of social services. The investigation of ethical, legal and social implications also plays a central role. The research focus has a broad range of expertise in this area.

At the same time, the research focus has excellent expertise in conceptual development issues: from service design to organizational design issues, adaptive process design and the design of information and technology architecture - also with a view to the appropriate design of socio-technical systems and technology-related education as well as methods of generalizing good practices and transfer with the help of design patterns and maturity models.

Interdisciplinarity within DITES Science Centre (Image: DITES 2023)

DITES is looking for further cooperation and technology partners who would like to design, test and research innovative, technology-based services in the fields of health, care and social affairs with the support of the interdisciplinary research and development team. This can include research collaborations, scientific support for model implementations, evaluations or joint applications for funding.

The research programme relates to a wide variety of digital technologies that could be used in social services as work tools and/or organizational technologies. The following technology areas currently appear to be particularly relevant:

Information and communication technologies (ICT): Office and specialist applications
IT trends: social networking, mobile computing, big data analytics, cloud computing, Internet of Things
Intelligent assistance technologies: Avatars, robotics, data- and sensor-based hybrid services
Artificial intelligence: machine learning, neural networks, deep learning, training and inference

While individual DITES projects do focus on individual technologies, the research focus as a whole is intended to take a look at the technology fields in their entirety. In particular, the increasing interconnections and convergences between them will be taken into account.

DITES | Levels of analysis (Image: DITES 2023)

Our research and development projects touch on situational, interactive and societal aspects of the influence of digital technologies. The analysis of developments and the dimensions of the research subject range from the micro to the macro level. The research focus deals with individual-centred, organizational and societal issues and consequences.