A transformed landscape of care

The debate on e-health in Swedish specialist press

Abstract

This article examines the debate on e-health in the Swedish medicine specialist press. E-health is not an entirely new phenomenon, yet digital care such as video meetings and chat via apps with medical personnel has increased rapidly in Sweden during the last few years, and the government’s goal is to provide the “world’s best e-health” by the year 2025. Implementation of digital techno-logy in public health care has transformed the ways in which the Swedish health system works, including what it means to be a patient and a provider of care. These transformations of care have led to an intense debate in the specialist press. The aim of this article is to examine how e-health as a concept is attributed different meanings in the Swedish medical professional press and to ana-lyse the conflict lines that shape this formation of meaning. The method used is discourse analysis of articles published in two journals: Dagens Medicin and Läkartidningen. The study identifies three organizing metaphors in which meaning is established: e-health as competition, e-health as economy, and marketization of e-health as an ethical problem. These organizing metaphors were all connected to possibilities and problems in the digital health care system such as more flex-ible and accessible care, increased costs, aggressive marketing from private e-health providers, and conflicts of interest among health providers. The analysis shows how these organizing metaphors construct not only meanings of e-health but also what it means to be a patient and a caregiver in the current public health care system in Sweden.