Cutting edge research on digital health
Digital infrastructures, including cables, satellites, data centres, computing devices, codes, algorithms, data, and standards, have been expanding across the globe, joined by changing forms of expertise and knowledge. These infrastructures – often these days associated with capitalist political economies – are shaping diverse aspects of life from agriculture to entertainment to health. In the field of health, many actors, from governments to aid donors to companies, believe digitalisation can transform healthcare delivery and health outcomes for the better.
The aim of the summer course was to teach students how social scientific theories and methods could help us understand how digital technologies shape health systems, experiences, and outcomes across the world. Rather than an introduction to digital health or a how-to guide to implement it, the course zoomed out to consider its political, cultural, social, and ethical dimensions.
Public health in the digital era
The course drew on real-life examples, including, among other things, epidemic surveillance apps in the Covid-19 response, digital crowdsource funding for medical expenses, and AI-driven remote forms of diagnosis and care. In doing so, it explored how processes of digitalisation interweave with the efforts of multiple actors to achieve health and well-being for themselves and others. It examined various issues such as equity, privacy, safety, appropriateness, and the divergent interests that shape digital health. And it explored how public health, healthcare services and health-seeking are transforming in the digital era.
Teaching by experts from around the world
The course was funded by a SAMEVAL network support grant awarded to the Global Health Politics group by the Norwegian Research Council. It was led by Tom Neumark, with support and teaching from Katerini Storeng, at SUM. They were joined by experts from around the world.
From the discipline of anthropology, Claudia Lang spoke about the design of mental health apps in India, Vincent Duclos explored telemedicine between India and Africa, and mhealth in Burkina Faso, and Daniel Miller presented his and his team’s recent research concerning the bottom-up everyday innovation of smartphones for health across the world. From ethics and philosophy, Sridhar Venkatapuram lectured on the social determinants of health.
And Katerini Storeng brought together her team from the SMARTCOVID project, to present their findings concerning smartphone Covid-19 tracking in Sierra Leone, Myanmar, Norway, and Japan.
International and interdisciplinary
The course attracted students from across the world and from a variety of disciplines including public health, medicine, psychology, and informatics. Particularly useful for many of the students was the possibility to hear about cutting edge research on digital health, as well as be exposed to critical perspectives to the phenomena.
