Shaping the future e-patient

The citizen-patient in public discourse on e-health

Abstract

This paper investigates how public discourses, as articulated in EU policy and Austrian media documents, take part in the creation and stabilisation of a new patient figure – the e-patient. The documents we analysed act as one material form for enacting, performing and giving meaning to the changes occurring when a new technology enters established networks in the medical realm. Our analysis will show that the public discourses we studied deploy three rather different forms of discursive registers, each of which address and perform a specific relation between currently new information and communication technologies and citizen-patients. From one place, moment or problem-solution package to the next a slightly different hybrid and ‘multiple citizen-patient’ is being shaped, discussed, observed or concealed. The multiplicity we observed reveals crucial tensions and contradicting expectations expressed towards the future citizen-patient, showing the challenges for e-health in the making.