'Trust but Verify': Health Care Practices in the Context of Digitalization

Abstract

The article contains the results of an empirical research of digital technologies integration into the health care practices among large Russian cities residents, conducted in August 2020 – April 2021. Being one of the aspects of the transition to 'medicine 4P,' digital healthcare is based on the idea of a new type of patient – responsible, competent, ready to make decisions independently regarding their own well-being, which should lead to changes in medical communication. Initially, innovations were seen as tools of providing a more effective and trusting relationship between a doctor and a patient. However, the connection between (mis)trust in medical professionals and involvement in technology-­mediated ways of health care has rarely been the subject of scientific interest. This article attempts to answer the question of what happens to (mis)trusting a doctor in the context of digital healthcare. As a result of the analysis of 90 in-depth interviews the following conclusions were made. Today, the patient experience becomes hybrid and thus represents a combination of personal feelings (physiological, psychological), data supplied by devices (expressed in the form of numbers, graphs and diagrams), information obtained from the Internet sources and recommendations of medical professionals. The place of traditional doctor-­patient interaction is occupied by a network of real and virtual actors, including bloggers, relatives, gadgets, mobile applications, members of online communities whose status is determined not by distance, but by trust, which is increasingly diversified today. The physician is only one of the links of such a network. Despite the abundance of sources of medical information and assistance, the patient does not completely trust anyone but himself, acting as a network assembly point. Access to numerous resources encourage a continuous search and (re)verification of relevant information, which introduces significant uncertainty into patient experience.