Hospital Imaginaries in the New Health Bioeconomy

• In Event: Organizing Technoscientific Capitalism: Epistemic Values, Practices & Assets - III

Abstract

Hospitals are cultural products: their architecture and organisational form, and the care practices within them, reflect their wider socio-political and economic context. This presentation investigates the potential impact of the emerging New Health Bioeconomy on public hospitals. The New Health Bioeconomy is characterised by: policy initiatives aimed at creating a future of ‘health and wealth’; the championing of ‘advanced’ medicines such regenerative medicine & precision medicine; and the emergence of new biomedical innovation-orientated alliances and public-private collaborations. Such developments are indicative of technoscientific capitalism. They represent the ongoing assetization of biomedicine and health care, and I will illustrate that they are accompanied by a socio-political ‘reimagining’ of the social role of the hospital as a place of wealth-generating innovation. Using the UK context as an example and drawing on the findings of preliminary fieldwork, this presentation will examine the tensions between this and other cultural ‘imaginaries’ of the hospital, the values that underlie them, and the potential impact of these imaginaries on contemporary public hospitals.

Author

• John Grant Gardner, Monash University, Australia