Sammendrag
Comprised in the vision of Personalised Medicine (PM) is the expectation that a wide range of new technologies will drive through and facilitate the personalised form of healthcare. However, studies in the philosophy of technology and in Science and Technology Studies point to problems in assuming such a straightforward connection between the development and implementation stages of innovation. The actual impact technologies have on their designated practices can be surprising from the design and development perspective. Surprising both because the technologies might have a different functional impact than intended, and because the technologies might influence other, non-functional aspects of the practices, which were not taken into consideration in the development. Among other problems, both types of surprise make it difficult to anticipate which ethical issues that might surface from re-structuring an existing practice around a new technology. In this talk I shall focus on the latter type of impact, more precisely how the technologies of PM will challenge existing identities, roles in healthcare, and the relationships that patients have to healthcare professionals, informal caregivers, and to society at large. I will do this through regarding PM as a case of technological mediation, a theory about the human-world relation when it is mediated by technology. First, I shall present the main concepts of this theory, focussing mainly on how technologies contribute to constitute subjecthood, and then ask if the theory might contribute to broaden the basis for our anticipation and assessment of the impending transformation of healthcare coming from PM.
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