Based on sociological considerations, we pursue the following question in the context of our presentation: What are the opportunities and risks of algoritmization in regard of the health care situation?
Since the second half of 1980s, the concept of risk has been widely discussed. Also in the field of sociological theory there have been several considerations on how the concept of risk can be made fruitful. For example, pioneering work of Ulrich Beck (1992 [1986]) has extended the economic notion of risk as choice with respect to uncertain ends. As consequence the process of modernization has generated a new type of society, which Beck calls famously “Risk Society”. Similarly to Beck, Niklas Luhmann intends to elaborate a theoretical concept of risk. In his view, risk belongs to the most significant features of society (1996a: 5). However, different to other theories of risk, Luhmann considers risk not simply as a lack of safety, but rather as a communication process: “Only communication about the deployment or nondeployment of technology is risky.” (2005 [1991]: xxxiii).
We would like to take up these ideas and develop them further. The observation of current technology projects for the development of smart hearing aids and intelligent wound care shows various forms of risk coping. An important starting point for the development of digital technologies is the concern that individuals are prone to error due to their subjective perception and thus create and reproduce health care risks. New intelligent technologies are supposed to remedy the situation by guaranteeing more objectivity and security. Technologies can thus be understood as the institutionalization of communications regarding risks, which, however, generate completely different and new uncertainties and problems in the long term.