Platformization of COVID and the Rise of Biosocial Surveillance

Résumé En

The emergence of participatory medicine and patient-generated medical research and knowledge is gaining more traction, especially with the current global health crisis. Digital platform organizations bring together diverse market actors for partnership for the creation and distribution of aggregate medical data and find cures for diseases, hence challenging the conventional medical knowledge production and disease control. In this paper, I articulate how such platformization of patient/citizen-led medical research and disease control is organized and sustained through Foucauldian notion of biopower and Rabinow’s concept of biosociality to then draw attention to what I call biosocial surveillance, which is becoming increasingly relevant in today’s risk society. Indeed, global exacerbation of the Covid-19 pandemic pushes us to rethink the conventional slow-moving medical discovery and surveillance processes driven by dominant macro-institutions, and how the patient-citizen increasingly becomes an active partner of the surveillance of this pandemic together with macro institutions. I conclude with the limits and risks of biosocial surveillance through diverse platforms while acknowledging their efforts for a more democratized and accessible patient care and citizen-led medical research.