Paper short abstract:

The technological transition accelerated by the pandemic led to changes in territorial health services, especially in general practitioners’ work. Through an ethnographic study, I aim to highlight the innovative care practices they are experiencing using smartphones with their patients.

Paper long abstract:

Facing the impact of Covid-19, Italy’s healthcare services have massively accelerated the introduction of digital practices during the pandemic. Within a fragmented healthcare system driven by the health emergencies, as well as an increasingly aging population, the territorial service sector has greatly experienced the forced acceleration of digitalisation. Such a transformation attracted interests of private and non-private actors, transforming the relationships at play in territorial services without a clear guidance. Today, this technological transition has led to an area of concern in relation to the work of general practitioners (GPs), highlighting the significance of building and maintaining trust relationships between GPs, patients, and the healthcare system in the digitalised context In this uncertain scenario, GPs as well as patients are nowadays forced to deal with new technologies, such as smartphones. In this paper, through the lens of medical anthropology and Actor Network Theory, I aim to analyse the unofficial use of smartphones in GPs’ everyday activities. From the ethnography within the outpatient clinic, I explore how the absence of an official and unique digital structure around the GPs’ practice has led to both the GPs’ and the patients’ struggle of finding alternatives via using the smartphone’s instant messaging for arranging appointments, pharmaceutical prescriptions, and exchanges of clinical pictures and referrals via instant messaging. I suggest that digitalization is leading to the emergence of unprecedented care practices that highlight the transformative capacities between human and nonhuman actors.