Co-care: Producing better health outcome through interactions between patients, care providers and information and communication technology

The demands on healthcare are shifting, from caring for patients with acute conditions managed in a single-care episode to caring for patients with chronic and often complex conditions. With this shift comes a recognition that healthcare requires an interaction between patients and care providers, and of the interdependencies between these actors for achieving a positive outcome – that the results are co-produced. This paper introduces co-care, which stresses that the role of healthcare providers is to complement people’s own resources for managing their health so that patients’ and healthcare providers’ resources combined leads to the best possible outcome. This is done using tools and artifacts such as information and communication technology that enable knowledge to be created, shaped, shared and applied across the actors. Thus, in co-care, knowledge is not attributed to a single entity but distributed between them in line with the theory of distributed cognition. To put co-care into practice, several challenges must be addressed. This includes moving from profession-centeredness to patient-centeredness and from approaching care as a transformation of input to products to viewing care as linking needs and knowledge, as well as a substantial attitude and behavior change across healthcare stakeholders.