Saeedeh Babaii

The quality of care crisis (QCC) is one of the most crucial crises the modern medicine is confronting, as the existential and psychological needs of patients have not been addressed and satisfied. Several attempts have been made to find solutions for QCC, e.g., the Marcum's recommendation to make physicians virtuous. Most of the existing formulations for the QCC have regarded technology as one of the causes of this crisis and not part of its solution.Although the authors agree with the role of technology in creating the crisis of care to some extent, in this article we try to present the crisis of care so that medical technology is an important part of its solution. For this purpose, we analyzed QCC from the philosophical perspectives of Husserl and Borgmann and put forward a novel proposal to take account of technology in QCC. In the first step, it is discussed that the role of technology in causing the crisis of care is due to the gap between the techno-scientific world and the life-world of the patients. This formulation shows that the crisis-causing role of technology is not inherent. In the second step, it is tried to find a way to integrate technology into the solution to the crisis. In the proposed reframing, designing and applying technologies based on focal things and practices make it possible to develop technologies that are caring and are able to mitigate QCC.

According to the care crisis in modern medicine, the existential needs of patients are not sufficiently satisfied. One idea is that to address the crisis physicians should be educated to be virtuous. This suggestion is helpful but incomplete. It does not take into account the part of (non-)human factors, including (medical) technologies. In particular, the paper focuses on online caring forums and argues that they are technological factors that can play the role of focal things, in which the members gather together to do a care-related focal practice. Furthermore, we empirically study the online forums of Ninisite, a popular Persian website on pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting, and suggest that these forums shape focal practices that are helpful in alleviating the care crisis.

This paper initially examines theories proposed by Feenberg abouttechnical systems and alternative modernity, analyzes his thoughts, andconcludes that a framework of values needs to be provided in shapingtechnical systems. In a society like Iran, where policy makers are looking forthe realization of Islamic values, this framework of values is derived fromIslam. To explain the relationship between religion and technology, theconcept of concretization has been used up, according to which, all aspectsof civilization, including technical systems must be concretized based onIslamic values. Virtual space as a part of the technical systems must beconcretized with a holistic approach, based on Islamic values, and for thispurpose, there is no choice but a collective social life based on religiousvalues. The concluding section of the paper also tries to deal with anothersignificant issue which predicts the future of concretization at the level ofcivilizations which will be offered using the metaphor of the ‘sand desert’.