Paper long abstract:

'Personalized Medicine' (PM) is a new biomedical paradigm, that represents a case study of a new technoscientific-biomedical knowledge structuring process. During the last decade PM entered into the mainstream of the medical discourse, perceived as a solution for many medical institution's encumbrances.

In recent years insurance companies strengthen their position in the Israeli health system, due to the legislation of the National Health Insurance Law. The insurance companies started to market health insurance plans, which mostly covered and compensate serious illnesses, transplants and funded drugs that are not included in the national list of health services (healthcare basket). 'Phoenix', a commercial insurance company, which sells commercial health insurances plans, recently began to market a new health plan insurance called "Genetix - PM based on Genetics". This plan is the first one that focuses on the genetics features of their insured population. With this Genetix plan, Phoenix is trying to formulate the PM discourse in order to become a new influence actor in the Israeli Health System.

In this lecture, I will present initial findings from my PhD study that focuses on mechanisms of knowledge transmission and dissemination, from the laboratories to bedside medicine, analyzing these processes from technoscientific perspectives. The presented findings will focus on the discourse practices which are used by Phoenix in their marketing plan, based on the assumption that in this way, the company is trying to consolidate its position as an actor in the knowledge network.