Mort, Maggie M. and May, Carl R. and Williams, Tracy (2003) Remote doctors and absent patients: acting at a distance in telemedicine? Science Technology and Human Values, 28 (2). pp. 274-295.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
According to policy makers, telemedicine offers "huge opportunities to improve the quality and accessibility of health services." It is defined as diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring, with doctors and patients separated by space (and usually time) but mediated through information and communication technologies. This mediation is explored through an ethnography of a U.K. teledermatology clinic. Diagnostic image transfer enables medicine at a distance, as patients are removed from knowledge generation by concentrating their identities into images. Yet that form of identity allows images and the expert gaze to be brought into potentially lifesaving proximity. Following Latour’s thread, images must be captured and then mobilized to the knowledge base, where they must be stabilized into standard diagnoses, then combined with different images, waiting lists, skin lesions, dermatologists, paper records, and beds, so that ultimately, outcomes are produced. This huge task requires new knowledges and a widening of agency that, if unacknowledged, may see telemedicine projects continue to founder.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Journal or Publication Title: | Science Technology and Human Values |
| Additional Information: | RAE_import_type : Journal article RAE_uoa_type : Social Work and Social Policy & Administration |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | telemedicine • inscription • affordances • patienthood |
| Subjects: | R Medicine > R Medicine (General) |
| Departments: | Faculty of Health and Medicine > Health Research Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences > Sociology |
| ID Code: | 3347 |
| Deposited By: | ep_importer |
| Deposited On: | 18 Mar 2008 16:51 |
| Refereed?: | Yes |
| Published?: | Published |
| Last Modified: | 26 Jul 2012 17:25 |
| Identification Number: | |
| URI: | http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/3347 |
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