Health Data Economies: Imaginaries of Innovation Policy and the Making of Future Healthcare
Keywords:
datafication healthcare, imaginaries, innovation policy, economization, datafication, healthcare, imaginaries, innovation policy, economizationAbstract
The belief in revolutionary power of dataficationin medicine and healthcare has disseminated and consolidated globally during the past quarter of a century, and the future visions emphasize economic and commercial expectations. In my article, I study the economization of data-driven healthcare in Finland by analysing the techno-economic imaginaries around the datafication of healthcare. My main finding is that two formations of imaginary health data economy have been assembled in the context of Finnish innovation policy during the 2010s and 2020s: managerial planning economy pertaining public healthcare and driven by the ethos of austerity, and a political economy of emerging innovation business focused on attracting business partners and investors. In the context of the former, healthdata and datafication technology are defined as a device of austerity and management, as well as part of production machinery. Within the ‘eco-systems’ of the latter formation, data and ICT appear as carriers of expectations for profits and revenues, as national treasures, and as attractions inducing business partners.
