eHealth services, patient empowerment and professional accountability - An empirical study on the changing patient-doctor relationship in the digital world

In Sweden, as in many other European countries, government and public agencies have promoted the expansion of eHealth over the past years, arguing that this development enhances patient participation, empowerment and cost efficiency. The development is part of a more comprehensive movement, emphasizing patient’s rights including options to make far reaching decisions concerning the patient’s own care and treatment. This study focuses on the deployment of one such eHealth service – the patients’ digital access to their own medical records over the Internet. The use of electronic patient records (EPRs) is reported as being one of the most important services within the development of eHealth services and constitute a prominent part of the movement towards computerization in healthcare overall. In November 2012, the eHealth service “My medical record on the internet” was introduced in Uppsala County Council and the same civic service was introduced in another Swedish county council, Region Skåne, in March 2014. Both launches have caused resistance and, in some cases, strong negative reactions among many of the medical professionals. Simultaneously, the actions of the medical professionals have been discussed as well as criticized by other actors participating in the development process