The Biopsychosocial Actor in the Contexts of Health and Human Services Informatics

Abstract

The paradigm for health and human services informatics (HHSI) was developed by Finnish researchers. The four entities of the HHSI paradigm and their interrelations form the basics for informatics research and education in the University of Eastern Finland. The focus of the essay is on the entities of actors and action related to different conceptions of agency. The entities of data and technology are the backbones of digitalization. The further aim of the study is to modernize the Holistic Concept of Man (HCM) metaphor to take the form of the biopsychosocial (BPS) actor. The HCM metaphor with its Husserlian-Heideggerian backgrounds is renovated towards a more realistic model of an individual actor or decision-maker described by the BSP model. As the BSP actor is embedded in the contexts of the HHSI paradigm, the notion of the BPS-D actor or decision-maker emerges. The BPS-D actor is a hybrid agent, who has cognitive, emotional, informational, and action-oriented connections to other possible agencies and artificial systems in the digitalized encounter. The very context of future research is the HHSI neo-paradigm.