Workshop – April 21-22: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Hospital Ethnographies – The Wenner-Gren Blog

Organized by Divine Fuh, HUMA – Institute for Humanities in Africa at the University of Cape Town, South Africa and Fanny Chabrol, CEPED-IRD, France and funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, this workshop is located within the framework of the project Future Hospitals: 4IR/AI and the Ethics of Care at HUMA – Institute for Humanities in Africa headed by Divine Fuh, and the "Hospital Multiple" at CEPED-IRD headed by Fanny Chabrol. The workshop aims at proposing new ethnographic methodological and conceptual tools to think and imagine the "hospital of the future" in Africa, in particular, the way artificial intelligence (AI) seeks to transform and is currently transforming access to health care in hospitals today and in the coming years. Our project aims to build a problematisation of the hospital of the future and an ethnographic method to critically analyse the ethical, regulatory, and political issues with respect to AI, healthcare, and hospitals on the continent. We consider the "hospital of the future" – through the digitalization and computer automation of healthcare – as a global promise that needs to be challenged by ethnographic methods within hospitals, engaging with persons interacting with them. The first line of inquiry will challenge the logic of adoption and Africa as a place where development policies are implemented, where infrastructure projects are developed, in which technological innovation, mainly coming from the West, is presented as the promise of better health for those in need.