Revista Teknokultura (May 2021)

Digital capitalism and the e-health revolution

  • Mosè Cometta

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5209/tekn.74387
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 18, no. 2
pp. 175 – 183

Abstract

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This paper discusses the challenges posed by the advent of e-health. To contextualise the phenomenon, it defines the environment in which it arises: digital capitalism. The predatory dynamics of this social structure are likely to transform medical practice. Contemporary medicine seems to be poised between a renewed attention to the patient and their dignity – perspective of the medical humanities – and the reduction of the patient to a mere object of study and discipline – biomedicine. By favouring the quantification of the patient and a depersonalising approach, digital medicine risks breaking the bond between these two sides of medicine. At the same time, the development of medical technologies in a capitalist environment poses other risks that need to be weighed up: from the gratuitous appropriation of personal data to the creation of a discriminatory and classist healthcare system. Only by openly addressing these problems will it be possible to integrate these new technologies in a democratic way that promotes the common good.

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