Abstract
This paper explores virtual health professionals (VHPs), digital health technology software, in Swedish health care. The aim is to analyze how health professionalism is (re)negotiated through avatar embodiments of VHPs and to explore the informants’ notions of what a health professional is, behaves and looks like. The paper builds on ethnographic fieldwork with informants working directly or indirectly with questions of digital health technology and professionalism. Discourse theory is used to analyze the material. Subjectification, authenticity, and diversity were found to be crucial for informants to articulate health professionalism when discussing human avatars, professional attire, gendered and ethnified embodiments. The informants attempted to make the VHPs credibly professional but inauthentcally human. A discursive struggle over health professionalism between patient choice and diversity within health care was identified where the patient’s choice of avatars—if based on prejudices—might threaten healthcare professionalism and healthcare professionals by (re)producing racism and sexism.
Highlights
This paper explores virtual health professionals (VHPs), digital health technology software, in Swedish health care
In the case of digitally embodying a health profession, I argue that the digitized embodiment of the virtual health professional (VHP)1 affects the ways in which a health profession is understood
I focus on professionals working in or with health care and how they imagine the digitalization of health care will affect health professionalism
Summary
This paper explores virtual health professionals (VHPs), digital health technology software, in Swedish health care. In the case of digitally embodying a health profession (avatar), I argue that the digitized embodiment of the virtual health professional (VHP) affects the ways in which a health profession is understood (cf Lupton, 2014), where the dichotomy between the real and the virtual is challenged (Hayles, 1999; Johansson, 2014) This is because technologies “play an active role in shifting the traditional social and cultural boundaries of our work-places” I focus on professionals working in or with health care and how they imagine the digitalization of health care will affect health professionalism
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