Healthcare and Patient Communication in the Digital Era: A Patienthood and Patient Perspective

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Sinikka Torkkola Anna Sendra Toset

Healthcare and Patient Communication in the Digital Era

A Patienthood and Patient Perspective

Sinikka Torkkola, Anna Sendra Toset

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English

Routledge
15 September 2025

Communication studies; Health systems & services

Series: Routledge Research in Health Communication

This book provides a social and cultural theoretical framework for the digitalization of healthcare communication from a patient-centred perspective.

Through empirical case studies, the book outlines the experiences of patients as the digitalization of healthcare communication re-spatializes and re-temporalizes care and reconstructs patienthood and ill health. To demonstrate how changes in communication impacts health and illness, the book examines the digitalization process from three viewpoints. Firstly, it illustrates how the digitalization of illness enhances the availability of information and peer support, which increases patient empowerment. Secondly, it shows how the digitalization of disease transforms signs of disease in a patient’s body into electronic data, increases the distance between the disease and the patient, and enables diagnosis without a healthcare professional touching a patient’s body. Finally, it explains how the digitalization of sickness changes the power relations founded in health and reconfigures health citizenship.

Filling a theoretical gap in health communication scholarship, this book will be of interest to academics and postgraduate students in the field of Health Communication, Digital Communication, Communication Studies, and Health Sciences. The book also offers healthcare professionals new perspectives to respond to the increasing communicative duties arising from the digitalization of healthcare communication.

By: Sinikka Torkkola, Anna Sendra Toset
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 138mm,
Weight: 390g
ISBN: 9781032857336
ISBN 10: 1032857331
Series: Routledge Research in Health Communication
Pages: 114
Publication Date: 15 September 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Further / Higher Education , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Sinikka Torkkola is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences at Tampere University, Finland. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oulu, Finland. Anna Sendra Toset is a Project Manager in the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences at Tampere University, Finland.

Reviews for Healthcare and Patient Communication in the Digital Era: A Patienthood and Patient Perspective

“Digital health is revitalizing the increasingly demanding patient. How the system and professionals face the challenge of humanizing healthcare is a major question, to which this book seeks a transformative answer. It is a highly recommended introduction to the paradigm shift.” Jordi Farré, Rovira i Virgili University, Spain “This book offers brilliant analyses of the ways in which digitalization changes all healthcare communication and how the digitalization of healthcare communication alters the sociocultural understanding of patienthood. It provides anyone interested in healthcare communication with relevant information and new directions of study.” Valentina Marinescu, University of Bucharest, Romania “This book departs from the traditional perspective of health communication dominated by an industrial view presenting the patient as a passive recipient of assistance from above. Focusing on patienthood, the authors reverse the perspective to a patient-centred approach facilitated by digital opportunities.” Kaarle Nordenstreng, Tampere University, Finland