Emergent Technologies in Biomedicine and Healthcare: Boundaries, Tensions, and Possibilities - I

Abstract

Emergent technologies and the implementation of new and innovative models, measures, and systems present rich sites for STS scholars to follow, understand, and intervene on technologies in the making (Brey 2012; Guston 2014). As new technologies are implemented in existing biomedical research and healthcare infrastructures, they carry with them great promise to disrupt standards and routine practice as well as improve our understanding of health, illness, and the human body. Yet as STS scholars have shown, technologies often reproduce and deepen existing disparities (Eubanks 2018; Lee 2003; Murphy 2006; Noble 2018; Sankar et al. 2004; Shostak 2013). Studying how emergent technologies and systems are designed, regenerated, mechanized, commercialized, and integrated offers a window to understand the trajectory of technologies and the racialized, classed, and gendered logic of systems with which they interact. This panel invites empirical contributions that explore how emergent technologies and platforms are constructed, implemented, and standardized in biomedical and healthcare settings. In alignment with this year’s theme, papers should offer innovative approaches and generate new ways of reframing the promises of innovation. We particularly are interested in papers that examine the implications of emergent technologies and systems for inequality and health justice.

Chair

• Rosalie Winslow, University of California, San Francisco

Individual Presentations

• Hacking Health Issues in the Global South: An Ethnography of Medical Device Innovation in Contemporary India - Anisha Chadha

• Humans and Organs on Chips: Modeling the Body in the Translational Age - Melanie Jeske, University of California, San Francisco

• Using Electronic Health Record Data to Achieve Quality: How Measuring Quality Reorganizes Care Delivery - Rosalie Winslow, University of California, San Francisco

• The Values and Ethics of Biomedical Engineering Practices in The Design of Bionanotechnologies - Beth Strickland Bloch, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• Translational Research: Innovation across Medical, Industrial and Scientific Boundaries - Léo Mignot, Université de Bordeaux - Centre Emile Durkheim; Pascal Ragouet, Université de Bordeaux - Centre Emile Durkheim; Vincent Grimaud, Université de Bordeaux - Centre Emile Durkheim

Session Organizer

• Melanie Jeske, University of California, San Francisco