Big data and bold visions: The political economy of the emergent algorithmic medicine and healthcare

• In Event: Making Biofutures: Anticipating the futures of biomedicine, healthcare, and life itself

Abstract

According to commentators, big data will profoundly change the practices of medicine and healthcare in coming years. Notably, genome sequencing enabled by big data analysis, it has been argued, will allow the realization of ‘personalised medicine’, involving the ‘tailoring’ of treatments to individuals, and thus the elimination or minimization of adverse drug reactions. Such data are already finding application, for example by Australia’s health information company Genome.One. The impacts of the purported data revolution, however, are anticipated to go beyond medicine, to include the aggregation of ‘real time’ data of public health significance (e.g. data on individual activities and consumption practices), to enable or facilitate the prediction and prevention of disease and other adverse health outcomes. This envisaged big data-driven vision has some powerful supporters, and it has served to attract huge investment from governments and the private sector, keen to capitalize on developments. This paper offers a critical perspective on the promissory discourse underpinning these big data initiatives. I focus on the political economy of algorithmic medicine and healthcare, and I argue that the history of algorithmic medicine and healthcare reveals a significant long-standing commitment to belief in the ‘power of numbers’. However, despite extensive efforts to realize this future medicine and healthcare, developments are unlikely to play out in ways envisaged, for reasons that I explore. Nevertheless, the impacts of efforts to realize algorithmic medicine and healthcare are far reaching, including increasing surveillance and growing inequalities in health and healthcare.

Author

• Alan Petersen