ESA RN16 Health and Medicine & ESA RN24 Science and Technology – Webinar
Digital Health, AI, and the Transformation of Care - May 15th, 2026 ESA RN16 Health and Medicine & ESA RN24 Science and Technology - Webinar
The rapid diffusion of artificial intelligence and digital technologies, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is profoundly reshaping health, care, and everyday life. From national contact-tracing apps to AI-powered diagnostic systems, wearable devices, and smart platforms, a new ecosystem of socio-technical artefacts has emerged. These tools, once optional, now stand at the heart of healthcare practices and public health governance, blurring the boundaries between care, control, and surveillance.
This webinar seeks to critically examine the ambivalences of this transformation. Digital health technologies are promoted as necessary safeguards and innovative solutions, yet they also raise pressing questions about trust, autonomy, transparency, and responsibility. The doctor–patient relationship, in particular, is undergoing profound reconfiguration: citizens increasingly engage with biomedical knowledge, sometimes challenging medical authority, while clinicians and patients alike navigate new forms of visibility, automation, and algorithmic mediation.
We invite interdisciplinary contributions that investigate how AI, apps, and wearables are reshaping the regulation of life, health, and risk. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- The interplay between digital health technologies and institutional forms of surveillance
- AI-driven tools and their impact on the doctor–patient dynamic
- Sociotechnical imaginaries and the futures imagined by algorithmic systems
- Trust, responsibility, and algorithmic mediation in clinical decision-making
- Epistemic tensions between professional knowledge, lay expertise, and machine reasoning
- Everyday negotiations with wearable tech and data collection practices
- Participation, consent, and autonomy in tech-mediated care
- Cultural and institutional responses to AI in healthcare
- Resistance, refusal, and alternative approaches to digital health infrastructures
- AI and public sociology in health contexts
Participation in the webinar is free of charge. Proposal will undergo a single-blind peer review process.
Important dates:
- Submission Deadline: February 28th 2026
- Notification of accepted abstract: March 20th 2026
- Registration deadline for accepted participants: April 10th 2026