Patient Empowerment and New Citizen Roles through Telehealth Technologies - The Early Stage

The aim of the present article is to explore the potential for citizens to gain new empowered roles through the use of health technology. The authors propose the distinction between citizen roles on two levels: the role of the citizen as patient actively involved in his own treatment and then an 'extended citizen role'. Findings are based on a literature review combined with lessons learned from two telehealth projects currently running in Denmark. The authors find that the empowerment happens through information-sharing; offering the patients a visual overview of their course of treatment, letting the patients take their own measurements, and letting them provide verbal and written inputs. Finally, perspectives on communities of shared care and 'ambient assisted living' are discussed.