Digital Drugs: an anatomy of new medicines

Medicines are digitalized as aspects of their regulation and use are embodied in or draw from interlinked computerized systems and databases. This paper considers how this development changes the delivery of health care, the pharma industry, and regulatory and professional structures, as it reconfigures the material character of drugs themselves. It draws on the concept of assemblage in presenting a theory-based analysis that explores digital drugs’ ontological status including how they embody benefit and value. The paper addresses three interconnected domains – that of use of drugs (practice), of research (epistemology) and of regulation (structures)

Information Technology and Consumer Search for Health Insurance

Abstract We explore the impact of information technology on the level of premiums paid for individual health insurance by asking which kinds of buyers will have larger gains from the use of new technology. We compare ‘asking price’ data posted on an electronic insurance exchange with survey data on premiums actually paid before the advent of exchange and examine whether the pattern of differences between asking prices and transactions prices can be explained using a simple search theory. We hypothesize that older consumers, expecting to pay higher premiums for a given policy, had engaged in more intensive search than younger consumers, given the same distribution of prices and search costs. Therefore, the introduction of an electronic exchange that lowers the cost of search should have a larger effect on decreasing the level of premiums paid for those who previously searched less (i.e., younger consumers). We find evidence consistent with this hypothesis.Consumer Search, Price Dispersion, Information Technology, Health Insurance, JEL Classifications: L1, D83, I11,