Figuring ‘Patient 4.0’ in Scotland’s ‘person-centred’ health data futures

Nicola will be attending the British Sociological Association's 2025 Annual Conference to present her paper "Figuring ‘Patient 4.0’ in Scotland’s ‘person-centred’ health data futures".

Abstract

As health and care become ‘datafied’ (Ruckenstein & Schüll, 2017) and new healthcare practices seek to leverage the dual promises of ‘big data’ and ‘personalised care’, the role of the patient is changing. Various figures have been called forth to explicate the role of the patient in 21st century health-data ecosystems: the ‘digitally-engaged patient’ (Lupton, 2013); ‘patient 2.0’ (Danholt et al., 2013); the ‘patient-consumer’ (Defibaugh, 2019). Other work has elaborated on the emergence in recent decades of ‘data selves’ (Lupton, 2020), ‘technoselves’ (Brierley, 2015), and ‘scientific citizens’ (Irwin, 2001). I posit a new figuration, ‘Patient 4.0’, and critically reflect on its entanglement within person-centred health data policy and practice in Scotland.

Since data practices entail particular kinds of subjectivation (Scheel & Ruppert, 2021), it is apt to consider the processes by which such figurations are enacted, the arrangements of power they represent and reinforce, and the practical consequences they entail. Person-centred health data practices promise a ‘humanised’ (Chute & French, 2019) solution to some of the ethical pitfalls of ‘Industry 4.0’ principles as applied to healthcare, and a response to some of the problems identified by critical social studies of health, care, and data. But who is the ‘person’ such policies and practices are ‘centred’ around? Drawing on an ethnography of person-centred health data policy and practices in Scotland, I address how this person – ‘Patient 4.0’ – is imagined to emerge from the current duplicative and multiplicative data ecosystem, and from the messy everyday world.