Public Values in /health

The health sector is essential for the well-being of individual citizens, charged with the difficult task of reconciling public values and commercial logics where data are pathways to prevention and treatment as well as a commodity. 

While public values in healthcare are under pressure, technology is particularly likely to provide solutions to pressing challenges. For example, data feedback algorithms in eHealth applications can improve people’s lifestyles and patient-doctor communication, although they may also jeopardize core values such as personal integrity and solidarity. 

In the next decade, the key challenge for this sector will be to optimize the benefits of ADS while minimizing the risks to public values. As the healthcare sector was early to develop and implement ADS, many actors have experience with ADS or have been grappling with value-related questions that may advance the debate in other sectors. 

The healthcare sector is particularly suitable for studying new approaches to effective and value-secure ADS, and thus for defining and realizing public values in the welfare state.