From Digitalisation to Artificial Intelligence: New Scenarios for Health and Medicine

Datum
12. Feb­ru­ar – 13. Feb­ru­ar 2026 

Joint Con­fer­ence AIS – Soci­ol­o­gy of Health and Med­i­cine Sec­tion / STS Italia

Call for Abstracts for the con­fer­ence „From Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion to Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: New Sce­nar­ios for Health and Medicine”

Impor­tant Dates

- Dead­line for abstract sub­mis­sion: 30 Novem­ber 2025
– Noti­fi­ca­tion of out­comes: 15 Decem­ber 2025
– Con­fer­ence: 12–13 Feb­ru­ary 2026
– Venue: Tren­to, Italy

The increas­ing dif­fu­sion of tech­nolo­gies sup­port­ing diag­no­sis, treat­ment, reha­bil­i­ta­tion, and admin­is­tra­tive man­age­ment in health­care is accom­pa­nied by a com­plex set of socio-tech­ni­cal expec­ta­tions, which fore­shad­ow pro­found trans­for­ma­tions in clin­i­cal prac­tice and organ­i­sa­tion­al mod­els of ser­vices, with the promise of more inte­grat­ed, effi­cient, and sus­tain­able socio san­i­tary sys­tems. Although expec­ta­tions of trans­for­ma­tion cycli­cal­ly accom­pa­ny every new „next big thing”; tech­no-sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly pre­sent­ed as rev­o­lu­tion­ary for the world of care, those that have emerged in recent years appear qual­i­ta­tive­ly dif­fer­ent, per­va­sive­ly inter­twined with social, eco­nom­ic, and polit­i­cal dynam­ics that ampli­fy their poten­tial impact. Expec­ta­tions regard­ing the appli­ca­tion of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI) to med­i­cine, already present since the 1960s, now appear more con­crete due to its increas­ing dif­fu­sion in mul­ti­ple areas of social life.

The shared per­cep­tion that cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tions are struc­tur­al and not tem­po­rary can exert a drag effect, re ignit­ing inter­est in inno­va­tions that pre­vi­ous­ly remained mar­gin­al. Tech­nolo­gies such as blockchain for data man­age­ment or robot­ics in sur­gi­cal and reha­bil­i­ta­tive fields, which had not pre­vi­ous­ly achieved full inte­gra­tion, could thus find new appli­ca­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties, con­tribut­ing to fur­ther dynam­ics of change in the health­care sec­tor. The promis­es of change are embed­ded with­in a trans­form­ing frame­work. On the one hand, the adop­tion of AI tools moves in par­tial con­ti­nu­ity with pre-exist­ing health­care dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion process­es (e.g., tele­care), whose adop­tion seems to have spread more rapid­ly as a con­se­quence of the pan­dem­ic cri­sis. Com­pared to these changes, how­ev­er, AI is not a sim­ple exten­sion of already known process­es but intro­duces new log­ics and issues that require crit­i­cal re-exam­i­na­tion. On the oth­er hand, the most recent tech­ni­cal inno­va­tions are called to con­front a changed eco­nom­ic land­scape (e.g., pro­gres­sive reduc­tion of pub­lic spend­ing to sup­port health ser­vices), ide­o­log­i­cal frame­work (e.g., health as an indi­vid­ual respon­si­bil­i­ty of patients), pro­fes­sion­al con­text (e.g., hyper- spe­cial­i­sa­tion, lia­bil­i­ty, and pro­fes­sion­al pro­file enhance­ment), and increas­ing­ly com­plex pol­i­cy envi­ron­ment (e.g., reforms of nation­al health poli­cies) that are the result of struc­tur­al changes in society.

The con­fer­ence, joint­ly organ­ised by the Ital­ian Soci­o­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion (AIS – Soci­ol­o­gy of Health and Med­i­cine Sec­tion) and the Ital­ian Soci­ety for Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Stud­ies (STS Italia), aims to fos­ter dia­logue between two sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ties that, from com­ple­men­tary per­spec­tives, con­tribute to the crit­i­cal under­stand­ing of process­es inter­twin­ing health, med­i­cine, and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion. While shar­ing numer­ous the­o­ret­i­cal and method­olog­i­cal affini­ties, the soci­ol­o­gy of health and med­i­cine has tra­di­tion­al­ly focused on the social, cul­tur­al, and eth­i­cal dimen­sions of ill­ness, care prac­tices, and health poli­cies, inves­ti­gat­ing themes such as inequal­i­ties, rep­re­sen­ta­tions of health, and the role of health­care pro­fes­sions and organ­i­sa­tions. Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Stud­ies, instead, have focused more on the analy­sis of co-pro­duc­tion process­es between sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, and soci­ety, explor­ing how tech­nolo­gies are designed, adopt­ed, and reg­u­lat­ed, and how they, in turn, shape social prac­tices and insti­tu­tion­al con­fig­u­ra­tions. The com­ple­men­tar­i­ty between these two per­spec­tives will enrich the col­lec­tive under­stand­ing of how emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies are trans­form­ing not only clin­i­cal prac­tice but also expe­ri­ences of ill­ness and health, rela­tion­ships between patients and pro­fes­sion­als, and pub­lic policies.

In line with a strong­ly inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approach, the con­fer­ence is open to con­tri­bu­tions from soci­ol­o­gy, ethics, law, health eco­nom­ics, com­put­er sci­ence, med­i­cine, and infor­ma­tion engineering.

We invite the sub­mis­sion of abstracts explor­ing a wide range of top­ics, includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to:

- Infra­struc­tur­ing and gov­er­nance of health­care technologies
– Health data man­age­ment policies
– Health poli­cies and emerg­ing technologies
– Health­care poli­cies and regulation
– Telemed­i­cine, dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion, and new challenges
– Doc­tor-patient rela­tion­ship in the dig­i­tal era
– Ethics and AI in healthcare
– Robot­ics in healthcare
– Tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion and health inequalities
– Pub­lic per­cep­tions and social accep­tance of emerg­ing health­care technologies
– Process­es of co-con­struc­tion of health, ill­ness, and technology

Abstracts should be between 300 and 500 words in length and must be sub­mit­ted by 30 Novem­ber 2025 using the pro­vid­ed form.
Par­tic­i­pa­tion in the con­fer­ence is open to audi­tors only and does not require reg­is­tra­tion fees. All expens­es, includ­ing meals, are the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the participants.

Organ­is­ing Committee
Alber­to Ardis­sone (Uni­ver­si­ty of Mac­er­a­ta), Flavia Atzori (Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Marche), Ste­fano Crabu (Uni­ver­si­ty of Pad­ua), Mar­ta Gib­in (Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna), Francesco Miele (Uni­ver­si­ty of Tri­este), Veron­i­ca Moret­ti (Uni­ver­si­ty of Bologna), Enri­co Maria Piras (Bruno Kessler Foun­da­tion), Bar­bara Sena (Uni­ver­si­ty of Bergamo)

For any infor­ma­tion, please con­tact Enri­co Maria Piras at piras@fbk.eu.