Abstract
Digital transformation has become a hot topic in health care since the start of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Digital technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) have found new applications, for example, to achieve the twin goals of social distancing and health care delivery. The idea of smart hospitals managed by AI and the IoT has also moved to mainstream public discourse. But digital transformation, alone, is not enough for efficient and just health care. We also need critical governance for accountability of, and to democratize digital transformation.
The February issue of OMICS is titled “All Things Digital Transformation.” This special issue offers deep insights into the state of the art of digital transformation as well as horizon scanning in several frontiers of systems science: personalized medicine; data (im)mortality and thanatechnology; digital transformation of health, death, and grief in digital society; omics education in the digital era; planetary health genomics and digital twins for pandemic preparedness; and a best practice guidance for innovations in information and communication technologies.
Not only health but also death, loss, and mourning gained additional online dimensions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital thanatechnology, data (im)mortality and human–computer interactions, and new frontiers of systems science previously featured in the journal (Özdemir et al., 2021) are examined in additional detail and context in this special issue.
Amid hopes for scientific progress with digital technologies, there is also concern for disinformation attendant to extreme digital transformation. Disinformation is false information created and spread deliberately with the intention to mislead the public, obscure truths, and cause damage. No doubt, lies and disinformation have existed throughout human history. But disinformation reached seismic scales and speeds with convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate emergency, and digital transformation and commodification of health care and the public space (Giordani et al., 2021; Somay, 2021; Springer and Özdemir, 2022).
Digital technologies can spread and repeat disinformation at extremely high speeds, resulting in echo chambers where perceptions and lies prevail over material evidence and truth. This special issue broadens the theoretical lens on knowledge production in systems science, and examines the current disinformation pandemic with an eye to its causes-of-causes (Springer and Özdemir, 2022).
Big picture on digital transformation
Health in the 21st century has become a cyber-physical system (CPS), a concept that underscores the entanglement of analog and digital components of health (Özdemir, 2019). The CPS has roots, in part, in the concept of Industry 4.0 that was launched in the 2011 Hannover Fair in Germany, as a digital high-tech strategy.
Since the 1980s, science governance frames focused narrowly on the market efficiency criterion, and bracketed out power asymmetries; historical and structural social injustices; and the politics embedded in digital health, technology, and society (Özdemir, 2021; Thorp, 2020). There is an urgent need to shift toward critically informed technology governance to democratize digital transformation specifically, and science more generally (Guston, 2004; Von Schomberg and Hankins, 2019; Von Schomberg and Özdemir, 2020).
Feminist studies of digital technologies for critically informed governance
Feminist governance frames are well poised to cultivate collective action to democratize digital transformation in systems science, especially in times of climate emergency and the rise of autocracies around the world (Özdemir, 2021). Importantly, intersectional feminism brings a much-needed theoretical lens for critical governance of medicine in digital society, by examining the often-neglected intersections of health with class, market economy, gender, race, colonialism, and climate crisis, for example.
The field of political determinants of health explores precisely these intersecting dimensions of scholarship, and is of immense relevance to digital transformation of planetary health and society. Technology analyses that put power, politics, and agency at their center, and examine not only knowledge but also framings of knowledge, offer the strengths of feminist technology governance (Barad, 2007; Özdemir, 2021).
As the trailblazing writer, public intellectual and cultural theorist late bell hooks (1952–2021; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/17/bell-hooks-obituary) asserted, feminism is for everyone, and all genders (hooks, 2014), and offers the promise for total liberation and elimination of oppression in all its forms and contexts including in science, technology, and medicine. Born Gloria Jean Watkins, hooks always wrote her name in lowercase because she wanted people to focus on the substance of her books. Her contributions are relevant to all scholars who strive to be systems thinkers and aim to go beyond the technical dimension of science to better understand the broader social and political context of knowledge, technology, and innovation.
Final thoughts
The special issue makes a contribution to the mapping of new frontiers of human–computer interaction and its broader societal dimensions as seen through a lens of critical studies of technology, governance, and knowledge. I welcome your future articles addressing digital transformation of systems science and integrative biology as well as critical governance of emerging digital technologies in health.
Footnotes
Disclaimer
The views are the personal opinions of the author only.
Author Disclosure Statement
The author declares there are no conflicting financial interests.
Funding Information
No funding was received for this article.