Empowering Patients Through Data: Promise versus Practice.

While increasing attention is given to transparency of personal health data, relatively few studies approached the use of patient data from a perspective of situated practice. Our preliminary findings of observations of 115 patient consultations and 34 interviews in the oncology department illustrate that the assumed patient empowerment is an elusive ideal, and instead increases patient's dependency on professionals. Taking a situated perspective allows to explain this unexpected consequence by unpacking the inscribed design properties, the expertise asymmetry and authority relations between patients and physicians, and the notion that disease itself is not neutral but an emotional event