Shaping ‘good’ genomic care: the implementation of next-generation sequencing technologies in clinical care practices in Europe, the U.S. and South Africa.

Expanding and deepening my PhD research on the introduction of next-generation sequencing (NGS) in diagnostic practice in the Netherlands and Belgium, this project will analyse and compare the shaping of NGS practices in the EU, U.S. and South Africa by investigating both the on-the-ground NGS practices and the sociocultural context of these local settings. Going beyond a linear conception of technology implementation, this project takes a sociological approach to understand how NGS is made to ‘work’ in the clinic whilst considering the cultural, political, and economic power relations it is embedded in. The project will analyse how NGS care takes shape in practice by focusing on key moments of decision-making, communication patterns, and standardisation and localisation across these three research sites with their distinct care practices, values, moralities, interests, and cultures (of care). This practice-based approach allows the proposed research to assess the influence of the local on the global and vice versa. Through a combination of literature review, document analysis and multi-sited qualitative fieldwork, this project will provide insight into the politics of care involved in shaping ‘good’ genomic care and show how this impacts the care that is offered to patients in the genetics clinics and broader perceptions of care.