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In Nordic countries, 'welfare technology' is a concept used increasingly by policymakers when discussing the promise of digitalisation in care for older people. In this paper, I draw on data from 14 qualitative ethnographic interviews with employees in municipal eldercare in Sweden, as well as observations carried out at a nursing home, to suggest the importance of studying how good care is enacted through welfare technology, whilst simultaneously attending to the adverse effects sometimes consequent from these practices. In this article, I explore what values are supported when doing care with welfare technology, and what values are neglected in this process. The theoretical starting point for this article takes its inspiration from recent discussions of care within Science and Technology Studies (STS). Employing a double vision of care, the article argues for the importance of understanding how good care is enacted with technology, while also attending to what these care practices exclude and neglect. Focusing on the use of social alarms, the article shows that when doing care with such technology, values such as independence, safety and some forms of togetherness and availability were enhanced; while other values such as other forms togetherness and availability, a stress-free working environment and functionality were neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a material semiotic perspective to study a highly influential model of healthcare policy and practice today: person-centred care. While person-centred care is often regarded as implying a turn away from technology and standardization towards more humanistic values in care, this article shows that mundane standardization technologies, such as an assessment protocol, are integral components of person-centred care. Building on interviews and observational studies at a Swedish hospital introducing person-centred care, the article analyses the person-centred protocol in situ. The article teases out three core concerns inscribed in the protocol: a concern for the patient experience and perspective, a valuing of evidence-based knowledge and a managerial imperative. The article illustrates how these contrasting values were rendered compatible through the continuous tinkering of healthcare professionals. Finally, it shows how users modified the script of the protocol under analysis and how relations between the three core concerns were adjusted in the process. The article concludes that tinkering and user–technology relations are of significance for the fate of person-centred care at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the ‘tenacious assumptions’ of biomedicine regarding the neutrality and universality of its knowledge claims have been significantly challenged by the growth of new collaborative and patient-focused models of Healthcare delivery. In this article, we discuss and critically reflect upon one such alternative Healthcare model developed at the University of Gothenburg Centre for Person-Centred Care in Sweden. This centre uses three clinical routines of narrative, partnership and documentation to provide Healthcare to people recognized as unique individuals rather than patients. Person-centred care in Gothenburg and more broadly is based on the assumption that a person is independently capable of reasoning and verbal expression and willing to provide clear and genuine narratives and cooperate with Healthcare professionals. However, we argue that by emphasizing individual capabilities of reasoning and verbal expression, an unnecessarily limited conception of personhood risks being imposed on these routines. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with researchers in three very different Gothenburg Centre for Person-Centred Care research projects – about healthy ageing in migrant communities, neurogenic communication disorders, and psychosis – we highlight that how persons are recognized as unique and capable varies significantly in practice across different Healthcare settings. Thus, we assert that person-centred care’s own potentially tenacious assumptions about the attributes of personhood risk distracting attention away from the variety of creative ways that professionals and persons promisingly find for translating the ideal of person-centred care into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]