A Sociology of Health Care in the Digital Age

Digitalization of health care and medicine transforms the usual organizational ties "doctor-patient", significantly alters the way of providing medical services and the way of personal contact, which is less and less significant, while preserving the social role of the doctor. Social changes resulting from the digitalization of health care, which sociology studies, are also associated with the transformation of the structure of the labor market of medical workers and the emergence of new professions of medicine of the future at the intersection of sciences. New opportunities are being created for the working population. Sociology also studies the social prospects of healthcare digitalization. These prospects are associated with the formation of the information society and the digital economy, the creation of technologies and services in medicine, quite competitive in the global and domestic market. The international expert community conducted sociological and socioeconomic research and noted a new direction: "investment in social impact". This confirms that the digitalization of medicine and the economy gave rise to the ideology of impact investing. That is, the digitalization of health care and the economy has led to the need to form a new civilizational paradigm, to the need for a human measurement of technological and economic processes. Positive social changes resulting from the development of digital medicine do not exclude the emergence of social risks (e.g., possible violation of privacy, patients' rights, lower level of security and dangerous dehumanization of society, lower value of the patient as a person) in the development of biomedicine and genetic engineering as areas of digital medicine. Information technology, digital medicine help to create a better organizational model of health care. Digital medicine as an activity implies that data in digital form, processing of large volumes and the use of analysis results can improve the effectiveness of medical technologies, especially at the stage of diagnosis, counseling and prevention. However, the immediate and final stage of treatment of the patient (for example, in surgery) still assumes the priority of human, not artificial, intelligence. This consideration is valid not only in relation to medicine, but also to many other manifestations of social activity of people living, as sociology teaches, in society and carrying out their social relations in their statuses and roles.

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