Co-creating digital care: public–private interdependence and the politics of welfare technology

Network governance has become a dominant lens for organising integrated digital care, often accompanied by the promotion of co-creation as an inclusive and collaborative ideal. This article critically examines co-creation by analysing the normative and organisational assumptions that underpin it—particularly those related to symmetric participation, consensus building, and mutual learning. Drawing on empirical studies of collaboration between municipal clinicians and technologists in Norwegian primary care, we show how these assumptions overlook power asymmetries, uneven capacities, and shifting professional jurisdictions. We argue that co-creation functions not merely as a participatory method but as a governance tool that allocates roles, decision-making, and forms of expertise in ways that have political and ethical consequences. Bringing insights from care ethics into governance debates, we demonstrate that the value of co-creation should be assessed not only by its procedural openness but also by its attention to the relational and practical complexities of care work. While we do not reject co-creation, we call for a more reflexive approach that recognises how normative commitments, structural constraints, and professional transformations shape co-creative practices and their implications for integrated digital care.