Networked biopower: personalized healthcare in a datafied world

This study fucuses on data-driven personalization in healthcare (DDPH), an umbrella term for collection, storage, and analysis of big individual data with a view to providing patient-specific healthcare solutions, including customized treatments, and disease prevention. Interviews with prominent figures in public healthcare in Israel and Estonia revealed their socio-technical imaginaries regarding DDPH trends. The analysis draws on the Foucauldian conceptualization of biopower, as well as on insights into the dynamics of the networked society. Results suggest that the imaginaries of healthcare elite translate onto new configurations of biopower – termed here ‘networked biopower’ – which are fostered by DDPH initiatives. They suggest furthermore that ‘networked biopower’ appears to be utilized by healthcare elite to govern and control, through novel medical surveillance and gazing, both individuals and entire populations.