When digital health meets digital capitalism, how many common goods are at stake?

Abstract

In recent years, all major consumer technology corporations have moved into the domain of health research. This 'Googlization of health research' ('GHR') begs the question of how the common good will be served in this research. As critical data scholars contend, such phenomena must be situated within the political economy of digital capitalism in order to foreground the question of public interest and the common good. Here, trends like GHR are framed within a double, incommensurable logic, where private gain and economic value are pitted against public good and societal value. While helpful for highlighting the exploitative potential of digital capitalism, this framing is limiting, insofar as it acknowledges only one conception of the common good. This article uses the analytical framework of modes of justification developed by Boltanksi and Thévenot to identify a plurality of orders of worth and conceptualizations of the common good at work in GHR. Not just the 'civic' (doing good for society) and 'market' (enhancing wealth creation) orders, but also an 'industrial' (increasing efficiency), a 'project' (innovation and experimentation), and what I call a 'vitalist' (proliferating life) order. Using promotional material of GHR initiatives and preliminary interviews with participants in GHR projects, I ask what moral orientations guide different actors in GHR. Engaging seriously with these different conceptions of the common good is paramount. First, in order to critically evaluate them and explicate what is at stake in the move towards GHR, and ultimately, in order to develop viable governance solutions that ensure strong 'civic' components.

The imagined scientist of science governance

“…Other interview accounts of usability showed a similar commitment, but towards industrial justifications of worth that focused on efficiency and industry collaboration (Sharon, 2018). IW24, for instance, worked with nanomaterials for industrial production; to be useful for him was to make new materials that would be beneficial to industry.…”

Blind-sided by privacy? Digital contact tracing, the Apple/Google API and big tech’s newfound role as global health policy makers

“…As a number of public health experts have pointed out, there are good reasons to opt for a centralized approach that have to do with a thorough understanding of contact tracing as a practice involving the norms and skills discussed above, 10 Though developing inhouse medical expertise, by hiring leading medical specialists into their ranks, is a strategy that is being pursued by these companies alongside the new partnerships they are establishing with traditional institutions and sectorial actors (Check 2015;Reisinger 2018). For an analysis of how these new partnerships are being justified, see Sharon (2018). more than with privacy (Kelion 2020, Leprince-Ringuet 2020).…”

“…If this capacity on the part of tech corporations to contribute not only financial resources, but also the technical, infrastructural and biomedical expertise required to address the current public health crisis seems surprising, it shouldn’t. In the past decade consumer technology companies have swiftly and surely moved into the health and biomedical sector, positioning themselves as important facilitators of data-driven digital health and medicine, in what can be called a “Googlization of health” (Sharon 2016 , 2018 ). Launched in 2014, Apple’s ResearchKit software, for example, now allows medical researchers to carry out clinical studies using the iPhone, and is currently being used by prominent medical institutions like Yale and Stanford.…”

COVID-19 and Contact Tracing Apps: Ethical Challenges for a Social Experiment on a Global Scale

“…This system has been introduced by these technology giants as a way of preserving users' privacy as it maintains data on their devices rather than transmitting to central servers. But while the technical expertise and financial resources that these companies bring to the table may be welcome contributions in times of a global public health crisis, we should be wary of the costs these contributions carry for society further down the line (Sharon 2018;Prainsack 2020). Namely, what kind of dependencies are created on these actors, who are already so powerful in other domains, and to what extent are they taking over functions of public sector actors in the provision of public services?…”