Can digital health save democracy? Meeting the cosmopolitical challenge of digital worlds

Abstract

This article explores the challenges and opportunities of social media health activisms to shape public participation in the digital future of healthcare. As health becomes ever more entangled with digital technologies, a growing ecology of digital health services promise greater individual autonomy to learn about and managing medical conditions, as well as accessing health services and engaging in forms of self-care. Cautioning against optimist visions of digital health and their promise of empowerment and autonomy, the article explores how health activisms on social media are reclaiming visions of healthcare that move beyond individual and depoliticised models of health technologies. The notion of cosmopolitics is employed to conceptualise relations between technology and health that implicate human and non-human interests in entanglements between health, morality and technology.

Applying the Digital Health Social Justice Guide

“…Previous work found that only 27% of clinical trials disseminated results to the participants ( 38 ). This is partly because it is often unclear how researchers can turn data into actionable insights ( 39 ). Lack of dissemination can impede trust between community partners and researchers.…”

How to Design a Governable Digital Health Ecosystem

“…The appropriate LoA is one that (a) looks at the systems level and considers the entire human, social and organisational infrastructure in which data-driven health and care technologies are being embedded (Macrae, 2019) and (b) involves public voices (Gonzalez-Polledo, 2018), so that the societal implications become clear (O'Doherty et al, 2016). A systems-level analysis, as set out below, will highlight the emergent impacts on fairness, accountability and transparency (Lepri et al, 2018) that result from the interaction between connected system components (Rebhan, 2017), and produce a more holistic understanding of the governance challenges facing an informationallymaturing NHS (Crawford & Calo, 2016) than possible when analysed at the individual patient LoA.…”

Unlocking wise digital techno-futures: Contributions from the Degrowth community

“…Even though ICT continues to dominate imaginaries of our technological futures, in Graeber's view there is also a sensation that repetition pervades our times. The feeling that nothing of what we see today is genuinely new and promising is also testified by a fading momentum of grand historical narratives of progress and liberation that characterised most of the last century (Coenen & Grunwald, 2017;Gonzalez-Polledo & Gonzalez-Polledo, 2018;McClure, 2018;Wakefield, 2018). Why, thus, did scientists, engineers, politicians and entrepreneurs fail to deliver a technological future that seemed just about to happen in the sixties, seventies and even eighties?…”