Background and activities

Pieter Jelle Toussaint (1965) is a Professor at the Department of Computer and Information Science.

He belongs to the Information Systems and Software Engineering research group.

Professor Toussaint has a Msc in both Informatics and General Linguistics from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, and a PhD in Medical Informatics from the same University.

Fields of interest and present research activities

Most of my research is related to the medical domain. My research interest is mostly covered by the overall theme Collaboration and Coordination of the IS group profile. Within that theme I focused on what can be seen as two sub-themes: 

Computer-mediated communication

In 2003 I initiated a research programme at the clinical informatics group where I worked that focused on Computer-mediated communication in health care. Several research projects were initiated within this programme. In 2005 I co-edited a special issue for the International Journal of Medical Informatics on communication in health care, together with prof. E. Coiera from UNSW in Sydney. At NTNU I supervised a PhD-student (Ero Karlsen) who has a project on computer-mediated communication and at the moment we are in the process of hiring a postdoc and a PhD-candidate for a new computer-mediated communication project. This project is a collaboration with the telematics departement at NTNU.

Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

The COSTT project, for which I am the project manager, focuses on supporting coordination of clinical work. Some of the PhD candidates I supervise position their research explicitly in the CSCW research field. At the CSCW conference in Savannah in 2010 I presented a paper on a workshop on CSCW in health care, that was later reworked into an article that was accepted for a special issue of the International Journal of Medical Informatics (Level 2). 

Membership in academic and professional committees, scientific review work including peer-review, outreach activities, and other professional merits

Recent grants acquired

  • 2,4 million NOK in the EVASAM program of the Norwegian Research Council for the SIKT project (2014-2015)
  • 23 million NOK in the stor IKT program of the Norwegian Research Council for the COSTT project (2008-2012)
  • 3 Ph.D. positions within the ToKeN2000 program of the Dutch Council of Scientific Research, for a project called Narrator (2003-2007)
  • 225.000 Euro for the development of an Internet based information system that supports patient education within elderly care. Project name; Geriwijzer (2002-2005)
  • 60.000 Euro within the man-Machine Interaction program from the Dutch funding organization Senter/Novem, for a postdoc position on the development and evaluation of Agent-technology in assisting patients in selfcare (2003-2007)

Scientific management

  • Assistant head of the Clinical Informatics group of the Leiden University medical center
  • Project leader of the Geriwijzer project
  • Project leader of the Narrator project
  • Project leader of the COSTT project
  • Head of the IS-group at IDI/NTNU
  • Scientific leader for the Health Informatics master at NTNU
  • Member of the steering board of the strategic area NTNU Health

Reviewer

  • International Journal of Medical Informatics
  • Computer methods and programs in Bio-medicine
  • Methods of Information in Medicine
  • Behaviour & Information Technology

Professional Organizations

  • Member of the board of the Dutch Organization for Medical Informatics till July 2007
  • Member of the track committee for IEEE CBMS “Supporting Collaboration in Healthcare” at CBMS 2009, 2010 and 2011

Professor Toussaint has supervised 3 doctoral students, and is currently supervising 5 PhD candidates.

Scientific, academic and artistic work

A selection of recent journal publications, artistic productions, books, including book and report excerpts. See all publications in the database

Journal publications