Medicine at a distance in Sweden: Spatiotemporal matters in accomplishing working telemedicine

Abstract

This paper examines the accomplishment of making technology work, using the discourse around telemedicine in Swedish healthcare during 1994-2003. The paper will compare four projects launched in the mid-1990s and policymakers' visions of healthcare through telemedicine. I will employ a sociotechnical approach developed within Actor-Network Theory that understands functioning technology not as something intrinsic but as an outcome of an ongoing process of negotiations. In the paper, I will extend the sociotechnical approach of what constitutes working technology to include spatiotemporal matters. I will also approach the closely related issue of space that has become a concern of Actor-Network Theory scholars interested in the accomplishment and continued workings of technology as it travels. In this discussion, an emphasis on fixed relations (network space) has been challenged by investigations into changing relations (fluid space). This paper suggests that in order to travel well, technology must be both fixed and fluid.