Inspecting Bodies and Coping with Disease at Home

One of the promises of telecare technologies is that healthcare will move partly from the hospital to the home. Telecare technologies are expected to extend the clinical gaze to non-clinical spaces and to nonprofessionals, that is, patients. These novel technologies thus follow the path of home-care and self-care technologies by taking diagnostic and monitoring procedures outside the hospital and bringing them into patients’ homes. As described in the first chapter, there is, however, a major difference between telecare and other home-care technologies. Because telecare technologies are ICT-based, the home becomes electronically connected and integrated within a wider network of healthcare, including telemedical centres, hospitals, and general practitioners’ rooms.

Home is not a Machine, Home is for People. Home is an emotionally charged and personally furnished cradle of living — physical space as much as social-cultural context and a state of mind.

(Friedewald and Da Costa, 2003, p. 18)