Digitising Global Health: Datafication and Processes of Respatialization in Africa

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Marian Burchardt
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 568263129

Although digitalization has been described by sociologists as a core element of current social change, the institutional and spatial changes it has triggered, particularly in the field of public health, have been little researched to date. Digitalization processes have particularly drastic consequences, especially in resource-poor societies, but have so far received little attention. The project closes this research gap by conducting comparative research into digitalization processes in the field of healthcare in Ghana and Malawi. It focuses on (1) re-spatialization processes (2) institutional dynamics and (3) the reciprocal relationships between these two processes. The empirical focus of the project is on the consequences of the digitization of patient registries (also: digital health record, digital patient file, electronic health record), whereby extensive but selective data doubles are created for each registered patient. These data doubles, which function as virtual body representations, not only lead to changes in medical interactions and diagnostic and therapeutic practices, but also circulate in transregional data streams and may produce economic benefits and far-reaching changes through processes that we refer to as vertical integration, based on economic conceptualizations (see also Weiß 2017). Digital data doubles allow individual data to be linked to larger data sets, leading to the geographical mobilization of this data and its spatial disembedding. Re-spatialization refers to the localization of people (patients), diagnostic and therapeutic practices, the deterritorialization of the data generated in the process and the selective linking of patient data, pharmaceutical research and its economic valorization. The project is located at the intersection of three sociological research literatures: sociological research on infrastructures, social science research on global health in Africa and the sociology of digitalization in the field of health. In its methodological orientation, it is in the tradition of interpretative social research (Przyborski & Wohlrab-Sahr 2013). The project follows on from the results of the sub-project “Off the Grid: Infrastructures, Spatialization Processes and Drones in Africa”, which was funded by the DFG as part of the CRC 1199 “Spatialization Processes under Conditions of Globalization” (2020-2024).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Ghana
• Cooperation Partners: Abdallah Chilungo; Dr. Sylvia Esther Gyan