Infrastructuring precision medicine: Making gene therapies for rare diseases workable in practice

Sarah Wadmann*, Anna Brueckner Johansen, Alfred Peter Born, Line Kessel

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Long viewed by social scientists as a future imaginary, precision medicine is now materializing in many healthcare systems in the form of new diagnostic practices and novel treatment modalities, such as gene therapies. Based on an ethnographic study of the introduction of the first two clinically available in-vivo gene therapies in the Danish healthcare system, we investigate what it takes to make these therapies workable in practice. Drawing on social science literature on infrastructuring, we describe the many forms of mundane work required to fit these therapies into regulatory frameworks, political processes and daily work practices in the healthcare system. Further, we observe how the processes of infrastructuring required to introduce the gene therapies into clinical practice had transformative implications as they redistributed roles and responsibilities among clinicians, pharmacists, procurement agencies and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Original languageEnglish
Article number116966
JournalSocial Science and Medicine
Volume351
Number of pages9
ISSN0277-9536
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2024

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