Online Idioms of Distress In Biomedicine and Ayurveda
Montreal Convention Center 510D (Palais des congrès de Montréal)
The Divya Yog Mandir Trust in Haridwar, India, offers a range of online medical services to patients all over the world. These services include online yoga asanas for medical conditions, ayurvedic drugs for everything from the common cold to cancer and consultations with its vaidya (doctor) through an online open forum. Similarly, Zdravje: MedOverNet, a Slovenian health-oriented portal, provides health and wellness related information as well as free online consulting with a number of medical specialists in nearly one hundred categories. This paper examines the idioms of distress in the context of the growing use of information technologies, particularly the internet. We argue that such online forums take healthcare beyond the clinic with two consequences: firstly they informalise healthcare both by their mode of operation and methods of communication which tend to be more casual than face-to-face encounters. Secondly, the availability of these services signals a shift in responsibility from the provider to the patient. Though patients may now have greater choice and agency, they are also tasked with managing complex and potentially multiple treatments which will have implications for patient outcomes and satisfaction.
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