Concordance: A Critical Participatory Alternative in Healthcare IT

The healthcare sector is undergoing large changes with technology taking on a larger role in both in-clinic consultations and out-of-clinic care. As the provision of care moves out of the hospitals and into people’s everyday lives the authoritative models of compliance and adherence and their hierarchical definitions of the patient-healthcare professional relationship are being challenged and other, more democratic and collaborative models emerging. Concordance is a model that favours an equal patient-doctor relationship and negotiation of care regimens. This article will identify critical alternatives to how care and healthcare IT may be designed based on best practice from both the medical and design research fields. In particular, this paper proposes ongoing design processes in which both care and healthcare IT are jointly designed in a concordance-influenced collaboration over time.