Therapeutic value in the time of digital brainwaves

Abstract

This article examines the value of medical technology through the case of electroencephalograms (EEGs), devices used to visualize brain activity and diagnose seizures. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the article shows that EEGs are valued differently by patients and medical practitioners. While practitioners value EEGs for their clinical utility, i.e., ability to inform clinical decisions, patients value EEGs even in the absence of clinical utility. Indeed, patients derive long-lasting therapeutic effects from this diagnostic technology. These findings intervene in the utilitarian calculus of therapeutic value—a mode of reasoning that equates value with clinical utility—commonly deployed in biomedicine and engineering and call for a recognition of alternative notions such as the therapeutic value of being witnessed and cared for by medical experts via EEGs and other technologies that require time to work. Expansive notions of therapeutic value are imperative for including marginalized patients—especially low-income, disabled, and women patients—in debates on automation and the future of healthcare. Studying how multiple stakeholders value a medical technology provides insight into valuation, objectification, expertise, and other concerns central to science and technology studies.