Call for Papers: Special Issue on the Shaping of Patient 2.0.
Call for Papers
Special Issue on
THE SHAPING OF PATIENT 2.0.
EXPLORING AGENCIES, TECHNOLOGIES AND DISCOURSES IN NEW HEALTHCARE PRACTICES
Guest Editors:
Alberto Zanutto (University of Trento)
Cristiano Storni (University of Limerick)
Enrico Maria Piras (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)
Peter Danholt (Aarhus University)
Deadline for paper submissions: January 31, 2012
Expected publication: December 2013
Healthcare systems in Western countries are undergoing profound changes in the organisation of services and patient treatment. A growing share of the aging population and an increase in chronic diseases are accompanied by a decrease of the workforce in the healthcare sector and a steady increase in spending. These challenging tendencies have spawned the need for substantial changes in the organisation of healthcare. Patient involvement and participation in treatment together with new information and communication technologies (ICTs) are considered as having huge potentials in meeting these challenges and provide better healthcare at lower costs.
The term “Patient 2.0” has been proposed as the new patient role emerging due to these tendencies . The concept is derived from the “Web 2.0” definition, which covers internet technologies where the content on the web is primarily produced by the users, also known as social media technologies. The notion of Patient 2.0 seems to embody the envisioned future of re-organised healthcare practices and it is commonly represented as the technologically empowered citizen who engages in new forms of participation, collaboration and self-management practices. Therefore Patient 2.0 is endowed with many great expectations to meet the above challenges. Consequently, the interests of many different actors such as healthcare systems managers, policy makers, manufacturers and ICT developers, but also patient associations or online social networks seems to converge with the dawning of the Patient 2.0.
However, the Patient 2.0 is by no means a settled matter, rather it is accompanied with diverse and somehow contradictory discourses, representations and perspectives that articulate different risks, issues and opportunities.
For instance, a critical assertion that stands in contrast to optimistic idea of the empowered, active, ICT literate and informed patient, is one where patients and their domestic environments are seen as subjects and spaces that are being disciplined and enrolled in the healthcare infrastructure. In this light the medical regime imposes patients’ participation as means to an end and the logic and knowledge of medical science and institutions are infused into the lives and homes of patients (Oudshoorn 2008; Mort, May and Williams 2003).
Another assertion of the Patient 2.0 is one where patients (and laypeople) are viewed as “health consumers” following a neoliberal logic of choice (Mol 2006). The premise of this view is a notion of the individual as autonomous and naturally inclined to take responsibility for him or herself. This individual is empowered to maximise the quality of life by accessing, producing, processing and sharing health information, making informed choices based on transparent grounds, and self-managing their treatment. Yet another perspective acknowledges the collective dimension of the Patient 2.0 where patients engaged in networks facilitated by ICT and social media technologies share personal information. In this manner experiences, knowledge and competences are produced and circulated that enable patients to supplement and interfere with established medical practices, potentially leading to the creation of new ways of knowing and treating the disease (Nettleton and Burrows 2003). In this case, Patient 2.0 renegotiates the terms on which empowerment and patient participation takes place and it challenges the traditional distribution of authority in the healthcare system (Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe 2009; Epstein 2008).
In this call we propose a broad definition of the Patient 2.0 as encompassing new patient roles and identities and organisation of healthcare in which ICT constitutes a significant component. This may be as concrete technological artefacts and systems, but also as derived effects from logics and rationalities related to information technologies (Berg and Mol 1998; Lehoux 2006). Patient 2.0 is an interesting figure to explore. Partly performed and partly imagined, idealised and shaped through discursive practices (e.g. enacted in public policies and health products’ advertisements), Patient 2.0 draws attention to the complex and evolving ecology of practices, actors, technology and discourses that (re-)constitute the healthcare system. The notion of Patient 2.0 is thus an intriguing lens through which to observe how things are and how they could be otherwise (Haraway, 1991).
We invite contributions that address the contradictory aspects of the Patient 2.0 by attending to the heterogeneous practices in which technologies, daily practices, healthcare organisation and governance meet and are negotiated and managed in various ways. Also, we invite contributions that address the transformative processes of becoming where agencies, diseases, technologies, life, work and care become translated and out of which novel identities and practices emerge. We are interested in contributions that critically address the technological assumptions inscribed in the design of technologies (Akrich 1992), while also critically attending to “unruly” and “wild” use practices that may contradict, circumvent and dismantle the technological imagery. In short, we invite contributions that address the controversial landscape of the Patient 2.0, where the Patient 2.0 is both fiction and fact and in a process of emergence, a figure that is performed in multiple ways and situations and in every case real in its consequences.
References
Akrich, M. (1992) The De-Scription of Technical Objects. Shaping Technology/Building Society. W. E. Bijker and J. Law. (Cambridge, Mass. & London: MIT Press): 205-24
Berg, M. & A. Mol (1998) Differences in Medicine: Unraveling Practices, Techniques, and Bodies (Durham & London: Duke University Press).
Callon, M., P. Lascoumes & Y. Barthe (2009) Acting in an Uncertain World. An Essay on Technical Democracy (Cambridge (Ma) & London: The MIT Press).
Epstein, S. (2008) ‘Patient Groups and Health Movements’, in Hackett, E. J., O Amsterdamska, M. Lynch, and J. Wajcman (eds), The Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, 3rd edition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press): 499-539.
Haraway, D. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women - The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge).
Lehoux, P. (2006) The problem of health technology: Policy implications for modern health care systems, (New York: Routledge).
Mol, A. (2006) The Logic of Care: Health and the Problem of Patient Choice (London & New York: Routledge).
Mort, M., C. May and T. Williams (2003) ‘Remote doctors and absent patients: acting at a distance in telemedicine?’ Science Technology & Human Values, 28(2): 274–295.
Nettleton, S and R. Burrows (2003) ‘E-Scaped Medicine? Information, Reflexivity and Health’, Critical Social Policy, 23(2): 165-185
Oudshoorn, N. (2008) ‘Diagnosis at a distance: the invisible work of patients and healthcare professionals in cardiac telemonitoring technology’, Sociology of Health & Illness, 30(2): 272–288.
Submissions
Manuscripts should be prepared according to the journal guidelines (see http://www.sciencestudies.fi/authors) and sent as word (.doc) or rich text documents (.rtf) to the guest editors. Please add at the end of your paper title the denominator “SSSIp2.0” (e.g. The new role of patients in information society - SSSIp2.0.doc). All papers will be double-blindly reviewed following the journal’s normal review process and criteria. Papers which may be accepted but will not be included in the Special Issue will be published in an ordinary issue at a later point in time.
For further information please contact the Guest Editors for this Special Issue:
Alberto Zanutto (alberto.zanutto@soc.unitn.it)
Cristiano Storni (cristiano.storni@ul.ie)
Enrico Maria Piras (piras@fbk.eu)
Peter Danholt (imvpdan@hum.au.dk)
Alberto Zanutto, PhD, is grant holder at the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento. He is interested in innovation in complex organizations and information technology development. In the field of health care system his research ranges from telemedicine to Personal Health Record systems.
Cristiano Storni, PhD in Information Systems and Organization, is lecturer in Interaction Design at the University of Limerick and part of the Interaction Design Centre. He is interested in STS and Interaction Design. In Health Care his research focuses on self-care practices and technology. (http://www.idc.ul.ie/people/cristiano-storni)
Enrico Maria Piras, PhD, is a tenured researcher at Fondazione Bruno Kessler (Italy). His research focuses on the design of new healthcare infrastructures, the redefinition of the role of the patients and the negotiations/conflicts between lay and medical expertise.
Peter Danholt, PhD, is assistant professor at Information and Media studies, Aarhus University, Denmark. His main research interests are the socio-technical practices and organization of healthcare and governance and surveillance in contemporary western societies.