Designing Pervasive Computing for Hospitals: Learning from the Media Affordances of Paper-Based Medication Charts

The current article investigates the affordances associated with paper out of the motivation that this can help inform design of pervasive and ubiquitous computing solutions for clinical use. In particular, we focus on paper-based medication charts, and discuss how these artifacts differ from various digital and context-aware solutions both in terms of media properties and functionalities. Based on a comparison of media, we argue that the affordances offered by the paper-based medication charts are not fully transferable to one digital medium, but that a combination of complementary digital media is required