1 Contextual Design of ICT for Physiotherapy: Toward Knowledge and Innovation Ecosystem G.B. Postolache 1,2 , R. Oliveira 3 and O.Postolache 2 , 4 * 1 Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Lisbon, Portugal 2 Instituto de Telecomunicações, Lisbon, Portugal 3 Faculdade de Motricidade Humana, Lisbon, Portugal 3 ISCTE, Instituto Universitario de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal Abstract With advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), changes have been produced in physiotherapy provision. However, low adoption of the new technologies calls attention for better theoretical model and methods for ICT design, which may fulfil the needs of health professionals and their patients. In this work we discuss the framework for designing ICT for physiotherapy context based on some of the results obtained during research on requirements and barriers of electronic health records adoption in physiotherapy. We underscore the importance of considering the context - the conditions in social and physical environment as well as end-users internal conditions - for requirements elicitation of the healthcare information system. Identification, training and collaboration with champion/leader in the target community may contribute to creation and evolution of knowledge and innovation ecosystem for dynamic progress in designing and developing of ICT tailored to the people’ needs, expectations and values. Keywords: contextual design, information and communication technologies, online training, serious games, knowledge ecosystem. Received on 17 November 2016, accepted on 08 September 2017, published on 09 October 2017 Copyright © 2017 G.B. Postolache et al., licensed to EAI. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unlimited use, distribution and reproduction in any medium so long as the original work is properly cited. doi: 10.4108/eai.8-11-2017.153334 * Corresponding author. Email:octavian.postolache@gmail.com 1. Introduction Man-made ecosystems are defined as organizational designs that are held together on the condition that their members are in formal or informal agreement about shared purpose (baseline) and operation modes (logic of action) [1]. Although, in management studies, a primary motivation for utilizing ecosystem concepts has been the desire to exploit self-organizing properties of natural ecosystem [2], the man-made ecosystem is not entirely self-organized [1]. In this paper we describe a conceptual framework to design the information system for physiotherapy context, in which knowledge and innovation ecosystem should be built to facilitate the flow of knowledge and values as well as the interactions between the members of these ecosystems. Valkokari K. [1] characterized the differences between these two ecosystems as follow: (i) the knowledge ecosystem (KE) have their main interest and outcome in creation of new knowledge while the innovation ecosystem (IE) focus on mechanism and policies fostering the creation of innovative start-ups around so-called regional hubs or cluster; (ii) a large number of actors are grouped around knowledge exchange or central non-proprietary resource for the benefit of all actors in KE while in IE geographically proximate actors interact around hubs mainly by intermediating actors; (iii) the actors in KE are the research institutes, innovators, and the technology entrepreneurs that EAI Endorsed Transactions on Creative Technologies Research Article EAI Endorsed Transactions on Creative Technologies 07 2017 - 10 2017 | Volume 4 | Issue 13 | e3