E-prescribing: Turning Innovation Aging Failure Into Success for Oncological Patients During Covid-19 pandemic

International evidence shows several benefits of the "dematerialization" of medical prescription (e-prescribing) for stay-at-home elderly during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, particularly in countries where digital health practices are already diffused (Koster et al., 2020; Craston et al., 2020; Urik et al., 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, newly introduced e-prescribing protocols in Italy aiming at avoiding contacts at the point of care and relying on user's availability of using ICT fail to reach the digitally illiterate, fragile, stay-at-home older population in great need of medications. This study presents original empirical findings (n=104) showing that interdigital agents' "invisible" work, securing medication availability to old people during the pandemic, may turn innovation aging failure into success. E-prescribing appears to affect social health relations by a) changing places of access to care (avoiding doctors' offices during the pandemic), b) creating new socio-tech networked connections among family doctors, patients, and caregivers, particularly when fragile stay-at-home patients suffer from an oncological condition and need chronic medication and care. Previous literature showed the importance of situational practice and informal work supporting aging care (Miele et al., 2020; Fornasini et al., 2016; Bruni e Gherardi, 2007) besides "formal" regulation. Building on the theoretical work of Mol (praxiography, 2002, 2010) and Murero (interdigital communication theory 2006, 2012), the presentation investigates with an ethnographic approach how e-prescription modifies trajectories (Glaser and Strauss,1968) and family care re-organization (Riemann and Schütze, 1991) around older people disproportionally affected by COVID-19 severe complications (Mueller et al., 2020).