Since the very emergence of the information technologies in healthcare, a major concern has been raised about the potential of remote services to undermine the intimacy, immediacy and humanity intrinsic to conventional, face-to-face medical practice. By contrast, notable literature reports the benefits of information technology-mediated services and their potential to improve efficiency and economic convenience of healthcare systems. This article aims to shed light on this ambivalence by retracing the evolution of doctor-patient interaction in relation to the main technological advancements in healthcare, and in particular, to services mediated by information technologies. Consequently, the reduction of cues and clues associated with the use of these services is framed into the reductionism of the biomedical paradigm, which provides a key to interpret the nature, scope and features of this process of technological innovation, along with its potential and limits.
Keywords: dehumanisation; doctor–patient interaction; information technologies; reductionism; technological innovation in healthcare.
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