From the Dream of Advanced Technology to the Pragmatism of the Pandemic: The Proliferation of Telemedicine Under the Conditions Created by COVID-19

Abstract

Medical technologies have brought about various transformations in the medical ethos over time. The permeating character of technology penetrates almost every aspect of human existence and has become even more visible within the sterile reality the COVID-19 pandemic has constructed, with many areas of life from education to work having been reshaped by this accelerated articulation of technology. Despite medical technologies having caused a wide variety of transformations in the medical ethos over time, telemedicine applications, whose existing tendency to emerge and spread in the medical field has been accelerated with the reality constructed by the COVID-19 pandemic, have been able to result in a total transformation both at the techne and praxis levels of the profession. The main aim of this article is to reveal the relationship between transformations at the technical and practical levels and to discuss the nonlinear advancement of technology through the sudden adaptation of telemedicine in times of crisis. In this context, the article conceptually discusses the different possibilities telemedical applications have in terms of medical practice, healthcare access, crisis adaptation, and the patient-physician relationship and questions the meaning of these transformations in the new reality built by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper argues the practices and applications within the scope of telemedicine to contain different possibilities; therefore, all the possibilities discussed throughout the article will be conceptualized not through the inherent determinism of technology but through the choices made during a technical object's social construction. This sociological conceptualization will contribute to telemedicine's positioning in the field.