TY - JOUR
T1 - Making and unmaking telepatients
T2 - Identity and governance in new health technologies
AU - Mort, Maggie
AU - Finch, Tracy
AU - May, Carl
PY - 2009/1/1
Y1 - 2009/1/1
N2 - The emergence of the field of health care at a distance, or "telehealth," has been embedded within discourses of high ambition about health improvement, seamless services, empowerment, and independence for patients. In this article, the authors examine how telehealthcare technologies assume certain forms of patients - or "telepatients" - who can be mobilized and combined with images and artifacts that speak for them in the clinical encounter. Second, a tentative intervention is made in these emerging identities in the form of facilitating some alternative discourses about telehealthcare. The aim is to stimulate debate by presenting and contrasting these different approaches to technology development. Such differences take material and discursive shape in the making and unmaking of telepatients, showing important interferences in the shaping of identity and possibilities for governance and participation.
AB - The emergence of the field of health care at a distance, or "telehealth," has been embedded within discourses of high ambition about health improvement, seamless services, empowerment, and independence for patients. In this article, the authors examine how telehealthcare technologies assume certain forms of patients - or "telepatients" - who can be mobilized and combined with images and artifacts that speak for them in the clinical encounter. Second, a tentative intervention is made in these emerging identities in the form of facilitating some alternative discourses about telehealthcare. The aim is to stimulate debate by presenting and contrasting these different approaches to technology development. Such differences take material and discursive shape in the making and unmaking of telepatients, showing important interferences in the shaping of identity and possibilities for governance and participation.
KW - Governance
KW - Identity
KW - Innovation
KW - Interference
KW - Patients
U2 - 10.1177/0162243907311274
DO - 10.1177/0162243907311274
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:57749183467
VL - 34
SP - 9
EP - 33
JO - Science Technology and Human Values
JF - Science Technology and Human Values
SN - 0162-2439
IS - 1
ER -