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Sociology of Health & Illness Call for Abstracts – Algorithms in Health and Medicine: Sociological Inquiries into Current Disruptions and Future Imaginaries
This special issue aims to expand the sociological theorising of digital transformations in health care and medicine, focusing specifically on algorithmic (including AI and data-driven) technologies. We seek papers that will address increasingly important, and yet still emergent, matters of concern in the provision of healthcare and medicine and imaginaries of their futures. It is highly significant because advances in processing power and big data gathered through miniaturised sensors, advanced robotics, chatbots, and the Internet of Things, are contributing to an expansive range of algorithmic capabilities. Trained from big datasets, deep learning algorithms can recognise patterns and detect clinically relevant features in imaging data beyond what can be perceived by the human eye. In this way, algorithms have become important diagnostic agents in radiology, oncology, and reproductive medicine. Precision medicine is being rolled out with enormous investments in many countries, whereby algorithmic capabilities provide the basis for interpreting the patient’s genetic makeup to predict or diagnose diseases (such as cancer) and determine appropriate treatments. Through natural language processing capabilities, algorithms are being employed as conversational agents and increasingly utilised in therapeutic support for patients with depression and anxiety. For example, the Woebot app, operating on the principles and practices of cognitive behavioural therapy, walks users through a series of questions to understand their mental health problems and provide them with coping strategies. Algorithms are also beginning to understand context and, thereby, can adapt the interface of electronic health records to help clinicians focus on information relevant for the specific patient. The field of algorithmic medicine is rapidly expanding towards new areas such as examining facial micro-expressions to detect pain among people with dementia and neurological problems, mining genome data to identify severity risk of COVID infection, and the provision of the artificial pancreas to automate insulin dispensary in diabetes care.
