How can we reimagine assistance in medicine?

Both Physician Associates (PA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are proposed to assist aspects of clinical medicine traditionally under the doctor’s remit, such as diagnosis, planning, monitoring, and decision-making.

We ask how PAs and healthcare applications of AI in the NHS are constructed, justified and contested as forms of ‘medical assistance’, and what ideas about medicine, work and expertise underpin them.

Questions we're exploring

What is a “medical assistant”? WHat do PAs and AI tell us about knowledge and power?

Does medicine need help? What problems are the PA role and AI constructed as solutions to and by whom?

How can assistance be imagined otherwise to enable more just ways of organising the NHS?

People

Dr Lukas Engelmann

Professor, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies

Lukas Engelmann is a Professor in the History and Sociology of Biomedicine at the University of Edinburgh. His research is concerned with the history of epidemiological reasoning in the twentieth century, for which he established and leads the Epidemy Lab, funded by an ERC Starting Grant.

epidemy.org ↗

Dr Nayha Sethi

Senior Lecturer, Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society

Dr Nayha Sethi is Senior Lecturer and Chancellor’s Fellow in the responsible regulation of health data and AI. Her background is in socio-legal and ethical aspects of health research, innovation and practice, with a focus on health technologies, especially data and AI.

Dr Cristina Moreno Lozano

Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society

Dr Cristina Moreno Lozano is an ethnographer of biomedicine and postdoctoral researcher with expertise on Science and Technology Studies (STS), medical anthropology and history of medicine, specialised on healthcare systems, medical technology and health professions.