Paper long abstract:

From mid-2000 the 'Patient 2.0'- term was proposed as a new strategy, where technologically empowered patients engage with technology. "Future patients take care of themselves" was a headline in a newspaper, and self-management and telecare technologies were means to change the practices of elderly patients. A transformation of the traditional healthcare system was on the agenda that challenged the traditional view on the role of patients (in the paper framed as 'Patient 1.0'.) Based on empirical field studies, interviews and written material, we argue, that this change in the socio-material assemblies may cause implications going beyond the immediate gains, politicians see by reducing hospitalization time, investment in new technology and transforming patients and relatives into experts. Mort et al. (2003) have suggested the terms 'remote doctors' and 'absent patients' and Oudshoorn (2008) says that the absence of face-to-face contacts implies that the healthcare professionals rely more on representations as for example graphs that often are carried out by the patients themselves.

Though ethnographic research in the Danish healthcare sector this paper shows how the vision and strategies actually are taken form when introduced to elderly heart and diabetes patients. The paper shows how new actors, i.e. technologies, pamphlets and training instructions changes the relationship in the established networks and a new 'chronic'/'cured' discussion challenges the establish patient/doctor relations. Theoretically we draw on analysis of discipline (Foucault, 1975), Actors/non-human actors (Latour, 1999) socio-material assemblies (Ehn, 2011) and domestication (Silverstone, 1989).