Speaking Precision Medicine: Preliminary results from the analysis of the discourses produced in a conference on biotechnological applications in biomedicine

Due to the vibrant moment in the development of new ICT, the field of research about the functions of biotechnology on biomedicine promotes a large number of discourse events, usually in the form of conferences and debates. In this same context, one of the major functions of these events is to articulate the new languages that are emerging with increasing speed and in greater quantity as a result of the technological acceleration observed especially in the area of genomics with the aim of expressing them in new healthcare practices. The way how this practical expression of the new languages is constructed by present days’ discursiveness will inevitably mark tomorrow's health policies, as witnessed through the European Digital Agenda discourse, notably in the context of the Action Plan for eHealth 2012-2020, which is one of the main guiding plans of European policies aimed to promote personalized health care.
This policy of discursiveness of digital health and precision medicine, which takes place at the confluence of the positions of the developers of the technologies, the medical applications of these technologies and the reactions of the public, will definitively establish the final form of precision medicine’s socio-technological alignment matrix. Hence, the analysis of the construction of this discursive alignment process, which is largely designed by the debate at conferences, is of central importance today. Realizing the importance of this discursiveness process for the final expression of future healthcare practices, we’ve conducted an analysis of the discourses produced through the various communications that were presented at an international congress on the applications of biotechnologies in biomedicine. This paper aims to present some preliminary data resulting from this analysis.