Paper
"Whose data is it?" Pharmacies, pharmaceutical professionals and pharmaceutical industry: Doing ehtnography about production of private epidemiology in Buenos Aires province, Argentine.
presenters
Maria Pozzio
Nationality: Argentina
Residence: La Plata
CONICET-UNAJ
Presence:Online
Keywords:
PHARMACIES-DATA-EPIDEMIOLOGY-ARGENTINA
Abstract:
In this paper I present progress of an ethnographic study on the pharmaceutical profession carried out in office pharmacies in the province of Buenos Aires, in Argentina. In daily work on pharmacies, there is a central element: the software for validation of medical prescription. Some of that are created by professional agroupments, but others are created by de pharmaceutical industry, like the most used: Farmalink. They are the same who produce the medicines, those who audit them and store and process sales information, but also personal and health information considered sensitive data. The control and regulation of personal data protected by law are weak; and is weak too the problematization of this ítem by the pharmacist, whom used the software in an a-critic way, which contributes to the notion that health software and technologies are politically neutral. In this paper, I follow Lic M., a pharmacist who sought to obtain the data produced by his own pharmacy to carry out research work. By doing this, her case allows us to show the problem of production, use and apropiation of data in "bonaerenses" pharmacies and framed it in a more general discussion about souveraity-privatization of epidemiological data, public health policies, sales and consumption of medicines, by an anthropological and ethnographic point of view.