The Unbounded Clinic: Telemonitoring and the Reconfiguration of the Care Milieu
(2026) Critical Philosophies of Technology — Location: University of Florence (28.September.2026)
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- Telemonitoring technologies are commonly discussed through the framework of biomedical ethics, with debates largely focusing on privacy, consent, and patient autonomy (Kaplan & Litewka, 2008). While these issues remain important, this paper argues that such individualistic approaches are insufficient for understanding the deeper transformations introduced by remote healthcare. By centering primarily on individual rights, mainstream ethical discourse often overlooks the radical spatial and infrastructural reconfigurations of care produced by telemonitoring systems. This paper proposes that telemonitoring should not merely be understood as a set of medical devices, but as a socio-technical transformation of the milieu of care itself. Through sensors and continuous data circulation, these technologies operate what can be theorized as an "extitution" of the hospital (Milligan, Roberts, & Mort, 2012), displacing clinical functions far beyond institutional walls. Concurrently, the domestic sphere undergoes a profound "reinstitution" (Milligan, Roberts, & Mort, 2011), transforming the home into a hybrid space: simultaneously intimate and clinical, private and institutional. Within this reconfigured environment, patients’ everyday practices are scripted into permanent regimes of connectivity, shifting the burden of clinical labor onto the domestic space (Oudshoorn, 2012). Drawing on critical philosophies of technology, and particularly the concept of milieu developed within the French tradition (Simondon, 1958; Stiegler, 1994), this paper investigates how technical environments actively reshape relations between bodies, spaces, and institutions. Rather than treating technology as a neutral instrument governed by external norms, this perspective analyzes how technical systems produce new forms of spatial organization and subjectivation. By articulating empirical insights from care geography and STS with the philosophy of the technical milieu, this paper shifts attention toward the political, economic, and existential constitution of technologically mediated healthcare.
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Degreef, N. (2026, September 29). The Unbounded Clinic: Telemonitoring and the Reconfiguration of the Care Milieu. Critical Philosophies of Technology, University of Florence. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/280706