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Short abstract:

This contribution seeks to reflect on how to study and make sense of potential discrepancies between envisioned uses of AI-based systems in healthcare and their more complicated realities in practice.

Long abstract:

This contribution builds on ongoing explorative empirical research on visions and practices of use of AI-based systems in healthcare contexts. Designed as a multi-level investigation of digitalisation efforts within the German healthcare system, this project is concerned with the contingent and at times contested ways of algorithmic and AI systems coming into being. It aims to analyse and make sense of potential discrepancies between anticipated uses and their more complicated sociotechnical realities in practice. In this context, this contribution seeks to explore how to study such discrepancies, including such connected to the ways narratives of patient-centered healthcare and user-centered approaches to technology development (fail to) unfold in practice, as well as related in/visibilities of affected social groups, while being attentive to the power dynamics within such digitalisation settings. Drawing on conceptual sensibilities of research on the fragility of sociotechnical systems (e.g., Hommels et al., 2014; Jackson, 2014) and care-ful research and generative critique in data and algorithm studies (e.g., Law & Lin 2022; Zakharova, 2022) this contribution seeks to explore how to study such tensions and social dynamics in the development and use of AI-based systems in healthcare contexts.