Resistance and Boundary Work

Technical devices are intriguing objects. Advocates of new technologies often try to convince us that technologies will solve of society problems and improve our lives. This view of technology as problem-solver also dominates discourses on telecare technologies. As described in the previous chapter, telecare devices are expected to solve financial and labour problems in healthcare and simultaneously improve the quality of life and care. This discourse thus ascribes a kind of magic to technologies that may be very tempting to believe but will inevitably lead to disappointments. This also happened to the high hopes invested in telemedical technologies. Difficulties in the diffusion and acceptance of this new technology in the last decade indicate that the promises articulated by the innovative firms are not as readily fulfilled as expected. Whereas Vitaphone and Hartis found fewer patients willing to use their telecare devices,¹ Philips met with resistance from doctors reluctant to collaborate with the new category of telecare professionals when they introduced their heart-failure telemonitoring system in Europe.² Actors who are supposed to play an important role in realizing the promises of the new technology thus appear unwilling to step forward to fulfil the roles attributed to them in the expectation statements. Obviously, patients and healthcare professionals are not (yet?) convinced that the new technology will solve problems and improve healthcare.

The fate of facts and machines is in later users’ hands; their qualities are thus a consequence, not a cause, of a collective action.

(Latour, 1987, p. 259)