Periodic Reporting for period 3 - Digital Good (The Digital Disruption of Health Research and the Common Good. An Empirical-Philosophical Study)
Reporting period: 2022-01-01 to 2023-06-30
In the past few years, Big Tech corporations including Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, have moved into the sector of health and medicine. This "Googlization of health" may lead to important advances in health and medicine, but it also raises significant risks. While these actors are experts in data collection and digitalization, which can be very valuable for the future of health and medicine, they are not health and medical experts. Moreover, they are private, commercial actors who are not accountable in the way that public sector actors are. This project researches the impacts of the Googlization of health on the sector of health and medicine and society at large: Will these companies become important gatekeepers of valuable medical datasets? How will privacy be dealt with? What role will they begin to play in setting research agendas? What kinds of clashes of expertise will unfold between technical and medical expertise? We will explore the Googlization of health as a phenomenon by studying several collaborations between public research institutions and these companies in Europe and in the United States. Using an empirical philosophical approach, we investigate which values and norms are foregrounded in these collaborations, and which ones are being backgrounded. For example, is technical efficiency being promoted over empathetic care? Is optimizing health being promoted over inclusivity and access to health services? We will use these findings to develop a framework for collaboration between public research institutions and these companies that will lay down conditions for ensuring that sectoral and societal values are protected.