Digital displacements in patient-professional relations

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Sociology of Health & Illness
• Digital Health

Background:

• The increasing digitization of healthcare necessitates understanding its impact on patient-professional relationships.
• IT-supported self-reporting by patients generates co-produced data, altering traditional healthcare dynamics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the relational consequences of electronic patient records (EPRs) using co-produced data from pregnant women's IT-supported self-reporting.
• To analyze how the clinical encounter is reconfigured in a digitized healthcare environment.

Main Methods:

• Grounded theory analysis.
• Empirical material from observations and interviews in an antenatal care unit.
• Inclusion of field notes and policy documents.

Main Results:

• The use of technology and co-produced data displaces tasks and alters relationships between healthcare professionals and patients.
• Four modes of patient involvement were identified: administrative tasks, professional resistance, individualized involvement, and homogenized involvement (categorizing pregnancies as 'normal' or 'abnormal').

Conclusions:

• Digital technology, through EPRs and co-produced data, redistributes midwife autonomy, tasks, and patient knowledge, leading to both intended and unintended consequences.
• This study offers a critical perspective on digitization's impact, moving beyond prescriptive e-government and co-production models to analyze real-world healthcare reconfigurations.