Digital diagnostics from Tanzania: Beyond mere technological fixing?

Abstract

Digital and data-driven technologies are increasingly being deployed in healthcare systems around the world, and used by individuals seeking to improve their health. Major global health institutions, from the WHO to the Gates Foundation, are arguing for their importance in the building of healthcare futures across the world. For critics, however, the broad enthuasiam for digital health has raised the question of whether too much faith is being put in minimal, 'technological fixes' driven by the market for problems that have intractable social determinants. This article focusses on a group of apparent technological fixers, Tanzanian data and computer scientists designing and building various forms of digital diagnostics. It argues that these diagnostics, and the social forms they are creating, need to be understood differently than as purely attenuated, market-driven technological solutions for specific problems. Instead, they represent ambitious efforts to create new and superior healthcare futures from Tanzania, that speak to broader systems as much as abstract and narrow technical processes, and to the public good as much as the private.