A Cartography of Data-Led Healthcare: The problematization of health, and of care, in contemporary society

At the BSA Annual Conference 2025 in Manchester, Max will present a paper discussing some of his early empirical findings from his research with DARE.

Abstract: The UK's National Health Service (NHS) has been, over the past decade-or-so, in a state of perpetual crisis. Though it is conceded that funding shortfalls, effects of the covid-19 pandemic, as well as political and organisational blunders have all contributed to an NHS that is now at its lowest ebb (see: The ‘Darzi Report’ [2024]), the remedies offered in policy circles are characterised by radical transformation above diligent rebuilding. Such radical transformations are motivated by an apparent shift in the shape of society itself (most prominently an ‘aging population’, and the rising number of long-term and mental health conditions diagnosed). Policy makers thus argue that these societal changes require a transformed healthcare service that leverages A.I. and intensified data sourcing (Hoeyer, 2023) to reorientate care around a new 'preventative' and 'precision' clinical medicine.

In this paper, I examine this problematization through an empirical account of policy as it relates to ‘data-led healthcare’ across NHS England and NHS Scotland. By following expressions such as: ‘secure data environments’, ‘data as a service’, ‘cloud first strategies’, and ‘interoperability’ I attempt to bring into the light a politics of clinical knowledge. A politics that concerns where power over coordination of clinical truths is located, and through what oracles uncertainty is transformed into actionable knowledge. In the spirit of Rose’s investigation of the psy sciences (Rose, 1996), my intention is to consider how the ethics of clinical subjectivity, the truths of bioscience, and the exercise of power are being transformed in our contemporary world.