Digital Shapeshifting
Digital Shapeshifting is a research program within the area of Health-promoting working life. The aim of the program is to attempt to understand the various ways in which digitalisation can be health-promoting.
Digital Shapeshifting is an interdisciplinary research program that explores the relationship between digitalization and health promotion efforts. The research analyses how digitalisation is transforming professional roles, work processes, organisational structures, and relationships between professionals and their clients/patients/students, etc.
The program explores both opportunities and challenges from a societal perspective, with a particular focus on issues of inclusion, sustainable work practices, continuous learning, and digital competence. Overall, the research aims to shape a digital existence that promotes well-being, counteracts stress and inequality, and leads to enriched relationships and strengthened professionalism. Research on digitalisation and health promotion also integrates ethical aspects into the societal challenges identified below. The program aims to contribute new knowledge on how we can utilise the opportunities of digitalisation while managing its risks and challenges.
Overarching Societal Challenges
a) Ensuring that digitalisation within health promotion is inclusive and does not marginalise certain groups.
b) Developing socially, economically, and ecologically sustainable digital work practices that promote well-being and counteract stress.
Examples of overarching questions being explored include:
- How are various professional roles and professions transformed by digitalisation?
- What new competencies are required in a digitalised work environment?
- How is the relationship between professionals and clients/students/patients affected?
- What are the ethical implications of digitalisation within various fields of operation?
The program's research focuses on three spheres
- Digitalisation of Work Progress and Organisational Structures
- Digital Competence, Education and Learning
- Changing Relationships and Professional Roles
Sphere 1: Digitalisation of Work Processes and Organisational Structures
This sphere focuses on how digital tools and technologies are transforming the execution and organisation of work across various professions. The research investigates new digital work processes and organisational forms that are emerging, as well as their consequences for efficiency, work environment, and well-being.
Specific Societal Challenge: To develop socially, economically, and ecologically sustainable digital work processes that promote well-being and counteract stress.
Example Questions:
- How are work processes and flows altered when they are digitalised?
- What new organizational and leadership forms are enabled by digitalisation?
- How are the work environment and well-being affected as work becomes increasingly digitalised?
Integrated Ethics:
Digitalisation offers new opportunities but also risks as the work landscape changes. Research should therefore explore the processes triggered by new digital work processes and automation and their consequences for human labour. Central questions include how to promote well-being and counteract stress in a digitalised workday. Ethical aspects such as privacy, surveillance, and control also need to be analyzed as work becomes digitalised.
Sphere 2: Digital Competence, Education, and Learning
This sphere focuses on the digital competence required in today's and future work environments. The research investigates the need for continuous, lifelong learning to maintain digital competence across various professions. It also aims to develop effective ways to educate for digital competence. High digital competence is a prerequisite for utilising the opportunities of digitalisation and minimising the risks.
Specific Societal Challenge:
To educate for digital competence while maintaining professional autonomy.
Example Questions:
- What digital competencies are needed in various professions today and in the future?
- How can one effectively educate for digital competence?
- How can professionals maintain digital competence through continuous learning?
Integrated Ethics:
Research should explore how to ensure that everyone has access to education to achieve digital competence. This involves avoiding a digital knowledge gap between different groups in society. As governance through manuals and algorithms emerges, professional autonomy and experience-based knowledge need to be safeguarded in the workplace.
Sphere 3: Changing Relationships and Professional Roles
This sphere investigates how relationships between professionals and their clients/patients/students are changing due to digitalisation. As work becomes more technology-mediated, interpersonal aspects are affected. The research analyses how professional roles are redefined and what ethical questions this raises. The goal is to understand how digital tools can be used to enrich relationships and strengthen professionalism.
Specific Societal Challenge:
To ensure that digitalisation within the workforce is inclusive and does not marginalise certain groups.
Example Questions:
- How do digital tools affect relationships between professionals and clients/patients/students, etc.?
- How are various professional roles redefined by increased digitalisation and automation?
- What ethical questions arise when professions and relationships are digitalised?
Integrated Ethics:
Research should investigate risks such as digital tools creating distance between professionals and their clients. Inclusion is an important issue—how can one counteract the exclusion of certain groups in a digitalised workday? At the same time, there are opportunities to enrich relationships through digital tools, which should also be studied.
Programme objectives and strategies
- Stimulate and establish interdisciplinary collaboration
Facilitate and strengthen ties between different subjects and academies at the University of Gävle for joint research projects.
- Increase the visibility of the programme's research
Actively communicate the programme's research progress and its impact on society through various channels and formats. - Seek and secure external funding
Establish a continuous process for identifying and applying for research funding that can support new and expand existing projects included in the programme.
- Create a national research centre
Position the programme as a global hub for research on the role of digitalisation in health promotion.
- Translate research results into practical application
Ensure that the programme's research efforts on digitalisation lead to real improvements in people's health and well-being. - Contribute to social change
Through the programme's research, contribute to social change where citizens acquire knowledge that promotes a more equal and healthy world.
- Collaborate locally and globally
Develop partnerships with stakeholders to disseminate and apply the programme's research results.
- Strengthen interdisciplinary research
Continue to build bridges between relevant subjects to tackle complex health issues. - Improve communication of research results
Implement effective communication strategies to demonstrate the programme's significance and attract different target groups. - Develop educational initiatives
Offer training courses that prepare for future needs in health promotion work in a digitalised society.
Selection of ongoing research
Digital training initiative for nurses in municipal health and medical care
Social workers have an important and complex role in society, which often involves providing support and assistance to people in vulnerable situations. In order to offer professional counselling, both education and practical training are therefore required. At the same time, research has shown for many years that newly qualified social workers often feel they lack sufficient knowledge of more practical skills, such as being able to conduct professional conversations. The aim of the project is to collaborate with professionals to develop learning activities for social workers using conversation training in virtual environments and AI-driven conversation analysis. The project's goal is to design pedagogical working methods with a focus on work-integrated learning, where virtual conversation training and AI-driven conversation analysis are used to create enhanced opportunities for professional learning. Conversation training of this type enables both collaborative learning and individual use when it suits the learner(s), and at no extra cost, as each learning opportunity does not need to be teacher-led. The project is developing a set of conversation scenarios with virtual avatars that can be used in additional courses within the social work programme, as well as in the induction of newly qualified social workers and in ongoing professional development within social services. A long-term goal is to gradually develop the digital conversation service and refine the criteria and examples used by the service in order to reach a broader target group. The project is being carried out in an interdisciplinary collaboration between professionals, researchers and teachers in social work and didactics with special expertise in how digital technology is used and can be used in teaching and learning.
Time: The project is being carried out in collaboration with professionals in the municipality of Sandviken and will run from 1 April 2022 to 30 September 2024. Funded by Vinnova.
Participants: Pia Tham (research leader), Bo Söderqvist, Åsa Vidman and Claes Westelius (all from the University of Gävle).
Client empowerment and increased scope for action? Digital social services under scrutiny
The digital transition has significant consequences for the welfare sector and, in particular, for social services' work with income support. The overall focus of the project is what digitization means for clients seeking financial assistance, while also including the experiences of social workers and managers, as the practices and conditions of clients and staff are closely linked. By mapping the digital tools that are used, the overall digital infrastructure is made visible, including e-applications, automated decision support, and video-based meeting formats.
The study has resulted in two separate but thematically related articles. The first article is based on interviews with clients and is published under the title The cost or potential of public value? Digital administrative burdens faced by clients seeking social assistance. It analyzes how digital solutions can both facilitate and complicate clients' contacts with social services, particularly through increased administrative requirements and new forms of exclusion.
Link to article: https://rsw.erickson.international/archivio/vol-n-11/08_trygged_2-25/ External link.
The second article, which has been submitted for review, is based on interviews with social workers and managers and has a clearer focus on infrastructuring. The analysis highlights staff experiences of how different digital systems interact in daily client work, how smooth or sluggish the systems are perceived to be, and how recurring gaps between platforms create a need for local solutions, manual work, and compensatory practices. These results challenge perceptions of digitalisation as a cohesive and streamlining process and instead show how digital infrastructure must be continuously maintained in practice.
Methodologically, the project is based on interviews with clients, social workers and managers in three municipalities of different sizes. A parallel aim has been to develop forms of practice-oriented research in which the municipalities are not only objects of study but also active partners in the exchange of experience and knowledge development.
The project was carried out during the period 2023–2026 in collaboration between researchers at the University of Gävle, Lund University, and the University of Gothenburg.
The project is a collaboration between the University of Gävle, Karolinska Institutet, and Örebro University.
The overall aim of this research project is to study the working environment, health, and well-being of telephone nurses before, during, and after the introduction of new working methods within 1177 (hereinafter referred to as nurses).
1177 is the residents' collective gateway to public health and medical care, and the number of visits is gradually increasing and now stands at around 20,000 per day. There are currently around 1,200 telephone nurses employed at 23 centers/regions. New digital solutions will be introduced gradually from 2023-2024 at the various centers with the aim of streamlining, increasing accessibility, improving care for patients, and improving the working environment for staff. It is well known that the introduction of new technical solutions can also cause stress.
The new digital solutions consist of three different parts. “New channels” involves the introduction of an image tool and video tool where healthcare seekers can send images to nurses and also be invited to a video call. “Operational support for healthcare advice” involves the introduction of a new operational support system for healthcare advice, which will gradually replace the previous Advice Support system introduced in 2006. " Resident symptom assessment and referral" means the introduction of a digital gateway to healthcare where residents answer questions digitally, followed by automatic triage and referral. This automatic triage is also known as a chatbot. Referrals from the auto-triage include calling 112, written self-care advice, or chatting with a nurse. Overall, this will result in several new work tasks for telephone nurses.
Data for the project will be collected through surveys, interviews, and analysis of communication between nurses and care seekers via telephone, video calls, and chat.
Rapid digital developments need to be monitored in order to develop evidence regarding systems such as these from a healthcare science perspective.
Project manager: Annica Björkman, district nurse, associate professor of healthcare science
Other researchers from the University of Gävle involved in the project: Maria Engström, professor of healthcare science
Doctoral project
What happens to the quality of care and the working environment when healthcare introduces digital care options? In 2022, Region Gävleborg launched a digital platform with the aim of offering the population better accessibility and quality of care through, among other things, semi-digital triage, the possibility of managing ongoing care contacts digitally, and facilitating care flows between units by giving staff the opportunity to conduct digital consultations across care boundaries. But will digital healthcare contribute to better use of resources? How will the work environment, quality of care, and patient safety be affected?
The purpose of the project is to study the new and increased digital working methods that the platform entails for healthcare staff and how it affects their experiences of quality of care, patient safety, work environment, and well-being. The project will be carried out with data collection via surveys and interviews with staff from 1177, primary care, specialized outpatient care, and inpatient care from several healthcare units in the Gävleborg Region between 2022 and 2026. The data will be analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods with the aim of publishing four scientific articles between 2024 and 2027.
The project is a collaboration between the University of Gävle and Region Gävleborg.
Doctoral student: Maarit Wirkkala
Research subject: Health care science
Publications
Andersson, P. E., Arbin, K., & Rosenqvist, C. (2025). Assessing the value of artificial intelligence (AI) in governmental public procurement. Journal of Public Procurement, 25(1), 120–139. https://doi.org/10.1108/jopp-05-2024-0057
Eriksson, B., Svartengren, M., Göras, C., Dahlgren, A., Lindblom, J., & Arakelian, E. (2025). When is digital documentation at its best? Swedish perioperative nurses’ experiences of digital documentation and its impact at their work environment: A qualitative study. BMJ Open, 15(12), e104968. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2025-104968
Maheshwari, S., Rajesh, K. N. V. P. S., Kanhangad, V., Acharya, U. R., & Kumar, T. S. (2025). Entropy difference-based EEG channel selection technique for automated detection of ADHD. PLOS ONE, 20(4), e0319487. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0319487
Rajesh, K. N. V. P. S., Vakamulla, V. M., & Sunil Kumar, T. (2025). Editorial: AI and machine learning application for neurological disorders and diagnosis. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 19, 1558584. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2025.1558584
Tinnerholm Ljungberg, H., Wallberg, M., Aboagye, E., Bergström, G., Björklund, C., Kwak, L., Toivanen, S., & Jensen, I. (2025). ‘Wish you were here’: Managers’ experiences of hybrid work in higher education. PLOS ONE, 20(12), e0339120. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0339120
Andersson, R., Bermejo-García, J., Agujetas, R., Cronhjort, M., & Chilo, J. (2024). Smartphone IMU sensors for human identification through hip joint angle analysis. Sensors, 24(15), 4769. https://doi.org/10.3390/s24154769
Andersson, R., Cronhjort, M., & Chilo, J. (2024). Wireless PID-based control for a single-legged rehabilitation exoskeleton. Machines, 12(11), 745. https://doi.org/10.3390/machines12110745
Hedlund, Å., & Lindberg, M. (2024). A matter of research integrity: The reporting of statistical software used in studies published in nursing journals in 2023. Learned Publishing, 37(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1622
Kaltenbrunner, M., Hagerman, H., Fagerström, C., et al. (2024). The implementation process assessment tool: Translation, contextualization, and psychometric evaluation of a Swedish version in a municipal elderly care context. BMC Health Services Research, 24, 1391. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-11889-x
Kumar, K., Suwalka, I., Uche-Ezennia, A., Iwendi, C., & Biamba, C. N. (2024). An improved deep learning unsupervised approach for MRI tissue segmentation for Alzheimer’s disease detection. IEEE Access, 12, 188114–188121. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3510454
Norrgård, A., Tham, P., Strömberg, A., & Kåreholt, I. (2024). How do child welfare social workers assess the leadership of their first-line managers? A 15-year perspective. British Journal of Social Work, 54(4), 1737–1752. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcad255
Rastogi, M., Vijarania, M., Goel, N., Agrawal, A., Biamba, C. N., & Iwendi, C. (2024). Conv1D-LSTM: Autonomous breast cancer detection using a one-dimensional convolutional neural network with long short-term memory. IEEE Access, 12, 187722–187740. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2024.3514662
Steive, K., Tham, P., Wiklund, S., Grell, P., & Kåreholt, I. (2024). Social work in an assembly line? The development of specialisation in child welfare and further internal division of work between 2003 and 2018. European Journal of Social Work, 27(3), 650–663. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2023.2284669
Wang, C., Li, X., et al. (2024). Detection of eating gestures in older persons using IMU sensors with multistage temporal convolutional network. IEEE Sensors Journal, 24(21), 35231–35244. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSEN.2024.3460651
To see all publications from the Digital Shapeshifting research program, visit the research program page in DiVA External link.
Required skills for researchers in the program
The researchers in the program work in a broad academic and societal context. They regularly participate in popular science contexts and are involved and present at both national and international research conferences.
In addition, their expertise is sought after in various academic assignments, for example as peer reviewers for scientific journals, as members of scientific committees for conferences, and in grading committees and other similar academic contexts.
Programme Officers
Contact Martin Salzmann-Erikson if you have questions about the research programme or read more about his research and see his publications in the researcher presentation.
Contact Sven Blomqvist if you have questions about the research programme or read more about his research and his publications in the researcher presentation.
This page was last updated 2026-03-02