Medicine without Doctors

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have been awarded £4.7 million through a prestigious Wellcome Discovery Award for the project ‘Medicine Without Doctors: Reimagining Care and Voice Through Play’.

Reimagining Care through Voice and Play

Who can define what care is?  What happens when medical expertise is actively displaced to other medical positions, technological advances, or community stakeholders?

This six-year interdisciplinary research study will fundamentally shape our understanding of contemporary and fast paced disruption to the practice of medicine. While change and shifts in authority are not new, the present historical moment demands that the humanities and social sciences reckon with an intensification of technological, social and political upheaval. Combining expertise from history, sociology, bioethics, law, design and science and technology studies, Medicine Without Doctors investigates medicine practiced otherwise.

Medicine without Doctors team

The project is a collaboration between University of Edinburgh researchers, not-for-profit community interest company The Love Tank and design studio Andthen. Dedicated to exploring the reshaping of voices, perspectives and experience, the team will investigate whose authority, needs and values are emerging when the doctor’s is decentred, and which are neglected and lost. To keep updated, sign up for the Medicine without Doctors Newsletter below. 

We are excited to undertake this research, which will allow us to address pressing health issues, including abortion, LGBTQ+ health, autonomous systems and Physician Associates. Working closely with community and creative partners, our interdisciplinary approach and novel methods will allow us to work across and beyond these areas and to consider how medicine can deal with contemporary challenges while centring the voices of those most affected by these issues.

Dr Ingrid Young Principal Investigator

Medicine Without Doctors is led by: 

PI: Dr Ingrid Young, Senior LecturerSenior Lecturer, Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society 
Dr Agomoni Ganguli-MitraSenior Lecturer, School of Law 
Dr Nayha SethiSenior Lecturer, Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society 
Dr Lukas EngelmannSenior Lecturer, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies
Dr Catherine Montgomery, Senior Lecturer, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies 
Dr Will NutlandThe Love Tank
Santini Basra Andthen 

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