The intervention of technologies in ambulant treatment and self-care: focusing on pregnant women with diabetes

Abstract

Currently, important tendencies within the Danish healthcare sector are centralisation of treatment and increased self-care. Technology is often believed to be essential to this development although both dystopian and utopian views exist on whether technology alienates or supports the patient. In this article we illustrate how humans interact with technology in self-care and ambulant treatment through the example of pregnant women with diabetes. Two empirical examples, Maja and Ida, illustrate how a number of strategies are put into practice in seeking to integrate the treatment in everyday life and to meet the demands of the treatment programme. Maja establishes a reciprocal, symbiotic relation to the technology and experiences it as a resource and succeeds in integrating the treatment in her everyday life despite costs. Ida, however, does not experience technology as a resource and is not able to integrate her treatment due to social circumstances and the inflexibility of the treatment programme. The article concludes that whether technologies are experienced as a resource depends on the specific relation between humans and technology that might be influenced by individual, non-medical circumstances.