Medicine without Doctors: Reimagining Care and Voice Through Play

Medicine without Doctors is a 6-year interdisciplinary research study that will fundamentally shape our understanding of contemporary and fast paced disruption to the practice of medicine. While change and shifts in authority are not new, the present historical moment demands that the humanities and social sciences reckon with an intensification of technological, social and political upheaval. Combining expertise from history, sociology, philosophy, law, design and science and technology studies, Medicine without Doctors investigates medicine practised otherwise.  

About the project

Medicine without doctors is now a possible and plausible future for healthcare. Already encroached upon by commercial and scientific stakeholders, doctors’ roles in the UK have recently changed dramatically. New technologies, patient activism, and economic upheaval draw power traditionally held by doctors. This project conceives of a future medicine without doctors as one of both promise and crisis; a perspective, in which different issues and approaches unexpectedly align. We will conduct four empirical analytical case-studies (abortion care, LGBQT+ health activism, autonomous systems, physician associates) to study how medicine without doctors is practiced, experienced, planned, despaired, or hoped. We utilise the sociology of care grounded in philosophy of voice to reimagine the future of care and explore whose voices come to matter across these disjointed sites. Methodologically anchored in speculative tools of play, we combine perspectives from history, law, ethics, sociology, and STS. We take an intellectual risk by moving beyond entrenched pathways to study the future of medicine through the lens of technoscience, social medicine, or economic optimisation. Instead, this project will construct a new field of research that centres matters of care for health which exceed medicalised frames and focusses on voices of medical reason beyond the doctor’s territory.

The project is a Wellcome Discovery Award project.

Project team

Dr Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra
Senior Lecturer in Bioethics and Global Health Ethics, Edinburgh Law School
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Dr Ingrid Young
Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society, The University of Edinburgh
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Dr Catherine Montgomery
Senior Lecturer and Chancellor's Fellow, The University of Edinburgh,
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Dr Nayha Sethi
Senior Lecturer, Usher Institute, The University of Edinburgh
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Dr Lukas Engelmann
Chancellor's Fellow, Senior Lecturer - History and Sociology of Biomedicine, The University of Edinburgh
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Mr Dev Basra
Studio Andthen

Dr Will Nutland
The Love Tank CIC