Data-Driven Healthcare

Contemporary healthcare systems across the globe are looking to data to resolve problems. Aging populations, human error, efficient allocation of resources, and keeping workers healthy in an increasingly pathological environment are social and political problems. Governments, industry, public organisations and academic institutions are, with growing frequency, looking to the better/proper/skilful use(/computation) of data to ameliorate them.

In this talk, three researchers (Abby, Nicola and Max) from the UKRI funded DARE research project, will give empirical accounts of the ways that data is being used in UK healthcare and biomedical research. Abby, Nicola and Max will present dispatches from their fieldwork, each working across different scales of attention, they will describe how data is being transformed into ‘intelligence’. In turn, they will discuss the ways healthcare and informatics are reshaping each other.

DARE has not made ‘artificial intelligence’ an object of its empirical work, indeed, the researchers are sceptical of the term. However, it is not only objects that cast a shadow. This talk will discuss the ways the researchers have been forced to reckon with AI. Particularly vis-à-vis the methods and modes through which biosocial activities are rendered as data points for computation, as well as how certain logics of intelligence suppose computation as uniquely virtuous when contrasted with other forms of knowing. The talk thus reflects on how we learn about the health of ourselves and others, the implications of this learning for care; and the potential futures for computational intelligence in healthcare.

About the speakers

Abby King is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Within the DARE project, she leads the 'Home' work package, exploring the ways in which big data shapes care and biomedical knowledge production in the home. Working at the intersections of Anthropology and Science & Technology Studies, her work has focused on the use of telehealth in the provision of mental health care; the implementation of electronic prescribing technologies in hospital; and the meanings and cultures guiding understandings of 'access to care'.

Nicola Sugden is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies. Nicola is the lead researcher for DARE’s ‘Nation’ work package. Trained in the history and philosophy of science and influenced by Science and Technology Studies (STS), she has an overarching interest in the past, present, and future of science, technology, and medicine – especially as they pertain to identity, normality, moral worth, and justice. Her past work has interrogated evolution and genetics; psychoanalysis, psychology, and psychiatry; disability, inclusion, and ethics; and reproductive technologies.

Max Perry is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies, and the lead researcher for DARE’s ‘Policy’ work package. His research focuses on the ways that technological innovation is processed and produced through policy making practices. Specifically, Max is interested in the ways that rhetorical and discursive formations within policy foreclose particular technological futures, whilst opening others.

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