The work digital does in pharmaceutical markets

Gemma Milne and Mathias Møllebæk

Chapter 19 in Handbook of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology Studies, 2026, pp 306-322 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Digital technologies find their way into many segments and core operations of the pharmaceutical sector, including discovery, trial, and safety surveillance activities. The use of digital solutions has not just meant changes in how pharmaceutical companies operate, but also how pharmaceutical markets as a whole are organized. In this chapter we analyze “the work that digital does” in pharmaceutical markets; that is, how digital technologies – with their various associated organizational forms and cultural logics – shape and are shaped by the pharmaceutical industry. In two case studies from the early and latter stages of pharmaceutical innovation, we discuss the business models of platform biotechnology and Big Tech companies and how their approach to digital technologies affords new forms of organization, dominating solutionist rhetoric and inequitable configurations of value. In the final section, we review two topics – artificial intelligence usage and data ownership – which are pertinent in digital pharma markets and which we believe social scientists should (if they are not already) be paying attention to with work which foregrounds the key values at stake. We end by making the case for researchers to not only examine, but intervene, in shaping more equitable pharmaceutical futures.

Keywords: Digital transformation; Digital capitalism; Platformization; Big Tech; AI; Biotechnology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035338443
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