Telemedicine and the senses: a review

Abstract

Telemedicine technologies have been presented as solutions to the challenges of equitable, cost-effective and efficient health service provision for over two decades. The ways in which the sensory dimensions of medical care and the doctor-patient relationship are mediated via telemedicine can be important contributors to the success, failure or unintended consequences of telemedicine. In this article, we present a review of the relevant literature in social research that provides insights into the sensory dimensions of telemedicine. In addition to considering important relevant work undertaken in the sociology of health and illness, we incorporate perspectives and research from other disciplines and fields that we believe can contribute to the development of scholarship on this topic. We contend that when doctors, patients and other healthcare workers enact telemedicine, sensory judgements have become, in part, a sensing of sensors. Viewing healthcare practitioners and patients as always and already digital data assemblages of flesh-code-space-place-affect-senses, demanding certain kinds of body work and data sense-making, constitutes a productive theoretical approach for future enquiries into telemedicine and other digital health technologies.

Social Media, E‐Health, and Medical Ethics

“…Recent studies have demonstrated that patients see the distancing effect of telemedicine as a benefit, feeling more comfortable discussing sensitive issues through a screen than in person with the doctor . But critics have advanced concerns that the move toward virtual clinicians will depersonalize medical interactions and erode authentic therapeutic relationships with patients . For example, some doctors have expressed concerns that the lack of physical touch and smell could affect their ability to make accurate diagnoses …”

Introductory Chapter: Telemedicine

“…Telemedicine attempts to replicate the patient-to-doctor relationship in a realistic, productive manner. Transmitting sensory data over the Internet presents a primary challenge to the practice of telemedicine [5]. Lack of awareness and experience with the technology, along with uncertainties over how telemedical © 2018 The Author(s).…”

Digitising psychiatry? Sociotechnical expectations, performative nominalism and biomedical virtue in (digital) psychiatric praxis

“…‘Telepsychiatry’ is a more contemporary instantiation of a (partial) psychiatric embracement of an external technological innovation; namely, telemedicine (APA, 2017b). Now a heterogeneous discipline encompassing an array of technologies and applications (Lupton and Maslen ), this was defined in the first editorial of the Telemedicine Journal as: ‘the delivery of care to patients anywhere in the world by combining communications technology with medical expertise’ (Goldberg : 1). For almost 30 years, clinicians and policymakers have advocated telemedicine as a means of containing healthcare costs and enhancing access (Lehous et al .…”