Congratulations Dr Christoffer Haase on your graduation from CRADLE
12 March 2024
Dr Christoffer Bjerre Haase has completed his PhD journey with CRADLE and the University of Copenhagen.
Christoffer’s thesis title is Datafying Diagnosis: Data Work in General Practice.
Christoffer was supervised by Professor Klaus Lindgaard Høyer, University of Copenhagen, and CRADLE’s Professor Margaret Bearman.
His co-supervisors were Professor John Brandt Brodersen and Associate Professor Torsten Risør of the University of Copenhagen, and Professor Rola Ajjawi of CRADLE.
Christoffer graduated in 2023 and is now specialising in family medicine. Christoffer is continuing to research, with a focus on intersections between data and diagnosis.
We asked Christoffer to describe the focus of his thesis and provide some reflections and highlights of his study experience.
What was the aim of your research?
In my thesis I investigated how, in the current data surge, data interact with diagnostic work in general practice, and to reflect on how to better prepare general practitioners to work in data-intensive environments. The background is the current development of the intersections between data and diagnosis.
Diagnostic work is affected by an unprecedented increase in availability and usage of expanding amounts of data that grow in sophistication and intensity, partly due to datafication and intensified data sourcing.
Based on ideas and theories from science and technology studies, philosophy of science, and Evidence-Based Medicine I have investigated the understandings and uses of data in diagnostic work. I conducted mainly qualitative interviews with involved actors, primarily GPs, as well as analyses of political strategy papers and regulations. My thesis resulted in four studies investigating four different types of data being used by different actors in four different types of diagnostic work. The four papers extend current understandings in how data are used in diagnostic work.
Publications
- Haase, C. B., Ajjawi, R., Bearman, M., Brodersen, J. B., Risor, T., & Hoeyer, K. (2023). Data as symptom: Doctors’ responses to patient-provided data in general practice. Social Studies of Science, 53(4), 522-544. https://doi.org/10.1177/03063127231164345
- Haase, C. B., Bearman, M., Brodersen, J. B., Risor, T., & Hoeyer, K. (2023). Data driven or data informed? How general practitioners use data to evaluate their own and colleagues’ clinical work in clusters. Sociology of Health & Illness. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13743
- Essén, A., Stern, A. D., Haase, C. B. et al. (2022). Health app policy: international comparison of nine countries’ approaches. NPJ Digital Medicine, 5, 31. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-022-00573-1
- Haase, C. B., Brodersen, J. B., Bülow, J. (2022). Sarcopenia: early prevention or overdiagnosis? BMJ, 376, 052592 https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2019-052592
- Haase, C. B., Bearman, M., Brodersen, J., Hoeyer, K., & Risor, T. (2021). ‘You should see a doctor’, said the robot: Reflections on a digital diagnostic device in a pandemic age. Scandinavian Journal of Public Health, 49(1), 33-36. https://doi.org/10.1177/1403494820980268
Any highlights from your PhD journey?
Besides publications I have had the opportunity to teach medical students in medical ethics and philosophy, family medicine, data in general practice. I have also taught research methodology for medical doctors and family medicine for master students in Global Health at the University of Copenhagen. I have been invited to present my research about data work in general practice to the Danish Medical Association and Danish Medical Journal, as well as for HealthTech’s Digital Health Section, Danish Technical University, Denmark. I have participated in several conferences in Denmark, Norway, and Australia.
Where to from here?
I am currently specialising in family medicine, which takes six years in Denmark in various hospitals and clinics. Parallel to that I am continuing to research, still about the intersections between data and diagnosis but also in relation to overdiagnosis, governmentality, professions and participation.
