Why healthcare cannot--and should not--become data-driven, despite the
many promises of intensified data sourcing.
In contemporary healthcare, everybody seems to want more data, of higher
quality, on more people, and to use this data for a wider range of
purposes. In theory, such pervasive data collection should lead to a
healthcare system in which data can quickly, efficiently, and
unambiguously be interpreted and provide better care for patients, more
efficient administration, enhanced options for research, and accelerated
economic growth. In practice, however, data are difficult to interpret
and the many purposes often undermine one another. In this book,
anthropologist and STS scholar Klaus Hoeyer offers an in-depth look at
the paradoxes surrounding healthcare data.
Focusing on Denmark, a world leader in healthcare data infrastructures,
Hoeyer shares the perspectives of different stakeholders, from
epidemiologists to hospital managers, from patients to physicians,
analyzing the social dynamics set in motion by data intensification and
calling special attention to that which cannot be easily coded in a
database. HHe illustrates how data can be at once helpful, overwhelming,
and sometimes disastrous through concrete examples. The COVID-19
pandemic serves as a special closing case study that shows how these
data paradoxes carry weighty political implications. By revealing the
diverse and sometimes contradictory practices spawned by intensified
data sourcing, Data Paradoxes raises vital questions about how we
might better use healthcare data.
