Omics and AI in precision medicine: Maintaining socio-technical imaginaries by transforming technological assemblages

Abstract

We understand precision medicine as a socio-technical imaginary according to Jasanoff. After briefly outlining how the imaginary of precision medicine emerged from the Human Genome Project and spread across national contexts, we raise the question of why the imaginary and the expectations and promises associated with it persist despite regular disappointment among practitioners about the failure of personalized healthcare. We argue that short-term technological hypes enable stakeholders to renew and maintain the promises of precision medicine. In our view, these hypes are around transformations of a technological assemblage. We discuss this in detail for omics and AI technologies and evaluate the recent transformations in light of the long-term imaginary of precision medicine.

Keywords

• precision medicine
• big data
• artificial intelligence
• imaginary
• assemblage