Trace of the tracer
Techno-solutionism, surveillance and the ambivalent experiences of digital health in Türkiye’s Covid-19 response
Datos Bibliográficos
| ID | 24145286 |
|---|---|
| Autores | Ayşe Polat (0000-0002-8739-6372, Istanbul Medeniyet University), Hüseyin Küçükali (0000-0003-1669-3107, Bogaziçi University), Zübeyde Demircioğlu (0000-0002-8749-006X, Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University) |
| Año | 2026 |
| Volumen | 21 |
| Número | 1 |
| Páginas | 2728442-2728442 |
| Fecha de publicación | 2026-12-31 |
| Peer Reviewed | Sí |
| Open Access | Sí |
| Tipo | ARTICLE |
| Revista | Global Public Health (JOURNAL) |
| Identificadores de la revista | ISSN: 1744-1692 • E-ISSN: 1744-1706 |
| Editorial | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17441692.2026.2728442 |
| PMID | 42734319 |
| OpenAlex | W7213163370 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Referencias citadas | 41 |
This study examines how digital health technologies were implemented in pandemic response, based on interviews and focus groups with frontline health workers in Türkiye. While the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital tools as essential solutions for crisis management, the findings reveal a more ambivalent reality.Digital systems improved coordination, replaced paper-based chaotic workflows, and enabled real-time data sharing. However, their effectiveness was constrained by infrastructural shortcomings, uneven digital skills, and misalignment with field conditions. Digitalisation also introduced new surveillance and performance monitoring, blurring professional boundaries and increasing bureaucratic burdens. Privacy concerns emerged as health workers used personal devices, while metric-driven oversight reduced their work to quantifiable outputs and obscured qualitative aspects of care. Furthermore, social inequalities, including limited digital literacy among older adults and the exclusion of migrants from official records, revealed the limits of technology-centred approaches and underscored the importance of human-centred interactions.This study argues that digital technologies function as socio-technical systems shaped by institutional structures, material resources, and practice. Türkiye's experience shows that digital tools can enhance coordination in public health emergencies when frontline experience, quality of care, and equity are prioritised. Otherwise, digitalisation risks reproducing the inefficiencies and inequalities it aims to resolve.
Accountability · Ambivalence · Digital health · Focus group · Health care · Inequality · mHealth · Pandemic · Public health · Qualitative research · COVID-19 Digital Contact Tracing · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Telemedicine and Telehealth Implementation
Digital technology and Covid-19
Innovationism and the New Public Intellectuals
Covid-19 telephone contact tracing in Flanders as a “contested” new genre of conversation
Local initiative supports case isolation and contact tracing during a Sars-CoV-2 surge in summer 2020
Digitalization of Governments during the Pandemic
Focus Groups as Qualitative Research
Why is repositioning public health innovation towards a social paradigm necessary? A reflection on the field of public health through the examples of Ebola and Covid-19
Stepping outside the clinic walls
Critical Perspectives on Digital Health Technologies
Not everything is as it seems
Using thematic analysis in psychology
The price of certainty
Covid-19, digital health technology and the politics of the unprecedented
Did the design and planning of testing and contact tracing interventions for Covid-19 consider social inequalities in health? A multiple case study from Brazil, Canada, France & Mali
Are we heroes or couriers? A phenomenological study on reappropriation of professional subjectivity and agency among health professionals during Covid-19 contact tracing in Türkiye
Thematic Analysis
| Velocidad de citación | historical |
|---|---|
| Altamente citado | No |