Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Doctoral School in Economics
Abstract
Information technology is changing rapidly worldwide and likewise in healthcare. The digital revolution will have a great impact on how physicians interact with patients. The Internet has become a powerful healthcare tool for many people. This will have an important effect on doctor-patient communication, and the transformation of these relationships has become a fundamental question. Due to these changes, an e-patient movement has evolved. This process requires a significant change in the attitude of patients as well as physicians. After a literature research, in order to explore how participants in the Hungarian healthcare system stand with this issue, we conducted in-depth interviews with six highly educated patients with serious illness and with four doctors. We used the grounded theory method to discover the characteristics in the doctor-patient communication. Our results show that some elements of becoming an e-patient have appeared on the patient side, but the habitual barriers of paternalistic doctor-patient communication overwrite these efforts on both sides
