Invisible Logic: The Role of Software as an Information Intermediary in Health Care

Driven by citizen demand and supported by government, the area of e-health covers a wide range of socio-technical innovations in health service delivery and organization, ranging from electronic patient records and hospital administrative computer systems to end-user consumption of online health information. Information technology applications in the health sector have made it possible to consolidate numerous and varied sources of information. For example, patients and their families can use the internet to search for information about health and illness online. With the emergence of online health information, the internet was often viewed as an optimal way to disseminate health information because it offers privacy, immediacy, a wide variety of information and a variety of perspectives (Bischoff and Kelley, 1999). As the inter-net has expanded to address the demand for medical information on health-related topics (McLeod, 1998), optimism about internet health information seeking has cooled, and although emphasis on internet-based health information as a means to empowerment continues (Masi et al., 2003), many recent studies which have explored the dynamics surrounding online health information consumption present a more nuanced view (Henwood et al., 2003; Pitts, 2004).