Rachel Rowe1
1University of New South Wales, Australia
Biography:
Rachel Rowe is a senior lecturer at the School of Population Health, University of New South Wales.
Abstract:
My presentation will propose the study of digital transformation and artificial intelligence as interrelated with financialisation. My research draws from historic studies on the relationship between technological innovation and distinctive configurations of capital in the early welfare state and neoliberal policy eras. Bringing this lens to present developments, the empirical study I undertook focused on digital health technologies and the industry surrounding them, including public health actors who are beginning to experiment with ‘big’ data and artificial intelligence methods such as machine learning and neural networks for predicting disease and social risk factors in populations. I observed 19 professional conferences and events in the USA and Australia, interviewed 30 key stakeholders and analysed a large archive of industry and media documents on population health analytics. The findings show how ‘big’ data and algorithms intervene in the production of knowledge about populations in ways that reflect and instantiate the financial logics of assets, risk, individuals and investment. I reveal how financial logics are shaping the strategies that digital health firms employ to manage their ‘data assets’, how future-aspirations for the uses of ‘big’ data and predictive analytics are animating investments, and new risk scores for assessing social and health behaviours are emerging in financial contracts between technology producers, insurers and healthcare providers. Across these dynamics, the research helps to make visible the subtle recoding of concepts, measures and practices in ways that promote financialisation in public health and social policy arenas.