Unequal Consumers: Consumerist healthcare technologies and their creation of new inequalities

Abstract

This article examines how consumerist technology creates new inequalities among patients in healthcare. More specifically, we analyze a communication technology that presents a case of consumerization of patients. Using critical diversity literature, we aim to theorize how consumerism embedded in technology assumes a ‘universal individual’, creating a tension for healthcare professionals between acknowledging differences among patients while aiming for equal treatment of all patients. Based on our empirical analysis of so-called Personal Online Health Communities, we explore, at the microlevel, how healthcare professionals deal with this tension. We identify four different practices; lacking awareness of differences, downplaying differences, discomfort around acknowledging differences and actively accommodating differences. We theorize how they ultimately all create new inequalities.