Ilpo Helén
Biographic Data
| ID | 253290 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ilpo Helén |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ilpo |
| FAMILY NAME | Helén |
| SIGNATURE | HELÉN I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Eastern Finland |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0071-0972 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 74 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Epic disappointment
This paper examines discrepancies between expectations and actual data management practices in healthcare. It develops the concept of steerability to demonstrate how guidance provided by integrated, multipurpose patient data management systems functions as a sociotechnical feature and a core value in emerging data-driven healthcare, and what happens when the promises of an all-encompassing data infrastructure fail. The paper analyses physician’s …
Adjusting expectations actionable
Our paper is a case study of the making of data-driven healthcare and anticipation work done by developer-experts in a project for implementation of an integrated patient data management platform in Finland. We focus on ‘personalised treatment plan’, a trope that experts regularly use when talking about the objectives of data management reform and their wishes for datafication of healthcare. We conceive of the personalised plan not primarily as a…
Citizenship by vitality
In this article, we develop a concept of health citizenship that is specific, historically informed, and flexible to use in the analysis of different domains of medicine and healthcare. Our starting point is that health citizenship is rooted in notions about the vitality and biological existence of populations and individuals. Key tensions in citizenship vis-à-vis health and illness emerge when ideas of membership of a nation, rights and responsi…
Putting Value on Extracellular Vesicles
Several studies over the years have paid attention to the entanglement of biomedical research and the multiplicity of expectations for scientific breakthroughs and economic gains. However, science and economy are by no means the only values attributed to the biomedical endeavour in an actual R&D project. In this article, we present an analysis of a case we studied in Finland, in which academic and commercial partners jointly studied minuscule ext…
A code for care and control
Many states make use of personal identity numbers (PINs) to govern people living in their territory and jurisdiction, but only a few rely on an all-purpose PIN used throughout the public and private sectors. This article examines the all-purpose PIN in Finland as a political technology that brings people to the sphere of public welfare services and subjects them to governance by public authorities and expert institutions. Drawing on documentary m…
The depression paradigm and beyond
This paper is an analysis of three elements of which depression as the primary target of current Western psychiatry and mental health care is made: the quest of psychiatrists to identify a depressive disease proper; the category of ‘major depression’ as defined by the diagnostic manuals; and the epidemiological view emphasising risk factors of depression. These elements are pivotal to the present understanding and experience of what depression is…
Making up families
Well, I knew this already' - explaining personal genetic risk information through narrative meaning-making
This article presents results from a Finnish focus group's study conducted among participants of a project called GeneRISK, in which the participants received a personal risk score for having a cardiovascular event based on genetic analysis, lifestyle and laboratory results. In the discussions, interpretations of the genetic risk score and its meaning were incorporated into personal narratives of health and illness. We argue that instead of servi…
From health to wealth
Symptoms, signs, and risk factors
In current mental health care psychiatric conditions are defined as compilations of symptoms. These symptom-based disease categories have been severely criticised as contingent and boundless, facilitating the rise to epidemic proportions of such conditions as depression. In this article we look beyond symptoms and stress the role of epidemiology in explaining the current situation. By analysing the parallel development of cardiovascular disease a…
Biological citizenship across the borders
This paper aims to broaden the view of the implications of advanced biomedical technology to biopolitical subjectivity through an analysis of the use of DNA profiling for family reunification of immigrants in Finland and Germany. By exploring complicated connections of biological traits to both national and ‘post-national’ modes of citizenship, the paper demonstrates that ‘biology’ plays an important role in decision-making on citizenship rights …
Multiple Depression
Shepherding Desire
In this article, sexual policy in Finland is analysed through two historical cases: first, contraception guidance and medical-psychological marital counselling at the Family Federation of Finland's (Väestöliitto) dispensaries from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, and, second, comprehensive sex education for adolescents from the 1970s to the 1990s. The study focuses on two modes of sexual government, namely the pastoral mode, which subjects indi…
Biotechnology
Health in Prospect - High-tech Medicine, Life Enhancement and the Economy of Hope
In this article, high-tech medicine is approached as life enhancement technology. Today, the most advanced medical technology operates on the level of cells and molecules, thus opening unprecedented prospects not only for curing and preventing illness but also for shaping of life itself. Thus, high-tech medicine seems to offer more efficient means to remove the restrictions of physical abilities and to improve and ‘repair’ vital processes. It pro…
Technics over life
The subject of this paper is the problem of selective abortion brought about by advanced techniques of foetal diagnosis. The issue of abortion today is analysed as an outcome and illustration of the emerging 'vital politics'. The paper explores the technicality of this new form of bio-power, and the ethical practice and forms of subjectivity it imposes. Two main points are raised. First, it is argued that the implementation of state-of-the-art fo…
Risk and anxiety
This paper is a case study on abortion problems engendered by the implementation of the advanced technology of fetal diagnosis and antenatal screening in Finnish maternity care. The analysis of the case focuses on 'ethical' concerns regarding high-tech reproductive medicine, which are seen as responses to controversies in medicine and public health care caused by the introduction of the new technology. The ethical concerns are articulated in thre…
Beyond good and evil
From health to wealth
Shepherding Desire
In this article, sexual policy in Finland is analysed through two historical cases: first, contraception guidance and medical-psychological marital counselling at the Family Federation of Finland's (Väestöliitto) dispensaries from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, and, second, comprehensive sex education for adolescents from the 1970s to the 1990s. The study focuses on two modes of sexual government, namely the pastoral mode, which subjects indi…
Biological citizenship across the borders
This paper aims to broaden the view of the implications of advanced biomedical technology to biopolitical subjectivity through an analysis of the use of DNA profiling for family reunification of immigrants in Finland and Germany. By exploring complicated connections of biological traits to both national and ‘post-national’ modes of citizenship, the paper demonstrates that ‘biology’ plays an important role in decision-making on citizenship rights …
Technics over life
The subject of this paper is the problem of selective abortion brought about by advanced techniques of foetal diagnosis. The issue of abortion today is analysed as an outcome and illustration of the emerging 'vital politics'. The paper explores the technicality of this new form of bio-power, and the ethical practice and forms of subjectivity it imposes. Two main points are raised. First, it is argued that the implementation of state-of-the-art fo…
Biotechnology
A code for care and control
Many states make use of personal identity numbers (PINs) to govern people living in their territory and jurisdiction, but only a few rely on an all-purpose PIN used throughout the public and private sectors. This article examines the all-purpose PIN in Finland as a political technology that brings people to the sphere of public welfare services and subjects them to governance by public authorities and expert institutions. Drawing on documentary m…
Well, I knew this already' - explaining personal genetic risk information through narrative meaning-making
This article presents results from a Finnish focus group's study conducted among participants of a project called GeneRISK, in which the participants received a personal risk score for having a cardiovascular event based on genetic analysis, lifestyle and laboratory results. In the discussions, interpretations of the genetic risk score and its meaning were incorporated into personal narratives of health and illness. We argue that instead of servi…
Citizenship by vitality
In this article, we develop a concept of health citizenship that is specific, historically informed, and flexible to use in the analysis of different domains of medicine and healthcare. Our starting point is that health citizenship is rooted in notions about the vitality and biological existence of populations and individuals. Key tensions in citizenship vis-à-vis health and illness emerge when ideas of membership of a nation, rights and responsi…
Symptoms, signs, and risk factors
In current mental health care psychiatric conditions are defined as compilations of symptoms. These symptom-based disease categories have been severely criticised as contingent and boundless, facilitating the rise to epidemic proportions of such conditions as depression. In this article we look beyond symptoms and stress the role of epidemiology in explaining the current situation. By analysing the parallel development of cardiovascular disease a…
Beyond good and evil
Risk and anxiety
This paper is a case study on abortion problems engendered by the implementation of the advanced technology of fetal diagnosis and antenatal screening in Finnish maternity care. The analysis of the case focuses on 'ethical' concerns regarding high-tech reproductive medicine, which are seen as responses to controversies in medicine and public health care caused by the introduction of the new technology. The ethical concerns are articulated in thre…
Health in Prospect - High-tech Medicine, Life Enhancement and the Economy of Hope
In this article, high-tech medicine is approached as life enhancement technology. Today, the most advanced medical technology operates on the level of cells and molecules, thus opening unprecedented prospects not only for curing and preventing illness but also for shaping of life itself. Thus, high-tech medicine seems to offer more efficient means to remove the restrictions of physical abilities and to improve and ‘repair’ vital processes. It pro…
Technics over life
The subject of this paper is the problem of selective abortion brought about by advanced techniques of foetal diagnosis. The issue of abortion today is analysed as an outcome and illustration of the emerging 'vital politics'. The paper explores the technicality of this new form of bio-power, and the ethical practice and forms of subjectivity it imposes. Two main points are raised. First, it is argued that the implementation of state-of-the-art fo…
Biotechnology
Shepherding Desire
In this article, sexual policy in Finland is analysed through two historical cases: first, contraception guidance and medical-psychological marital counselling at the Family Federation of Finland's (Väestöliitto) dispensaries from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, and, second, comprehensive sex education for adolescents from the 1970s to the 1990s. The study focuses on two modes of sexual government, namely the pastoral mode, which subjects indi…
Multiple Depression
Biological citizenship across the borders
This paper aims to broaden the view of the implications of advanced biomedical technology to biopolitical subjectivity through an analysis of the use of DNA profiling for family reunification of immigrants in Finland and Germany. By exploring complicated connections of biological traits to both national and ‘post-national’ modes of citizenship, the paper demonstrates that ‘biology’ plays an important role in decision-making on citizenship rights …
Symptoms, signs, and risk factors
In current mental health care psychiatric conditions are defined as compilations of symptoms. These symptom-based disease categories have been severely criticised as contingent and boundless, facilitating the rise to epidemic proportions of such conditions as depression. In this article we look beyond symptoms and stress the role of epidemiology in explaining the current situation. By analysing the parallel development of cardiovascular disease a…
From health to wealth
The depression paradigm and beyond
This paper is an analysis of three elements of which depression as the primary target of current Western psychiatry and mental health care is made: the quest of psychiatrists to identify a depressive disease proper; the category of ‘major depression’ as defined by the diagnostic manuals; and the epidemiological view emphasising risk factors of depression. These elements are pivotal to the present understanding and experience of what depression is…
Making up families
Well, I knew this already' - explaining personal genetic risk information through narrative meaning-making
This article presents results from a Finnish focus group's study conducted among participants of a project called GeneRISK, in which the participants received a personal risk score for having a cardiovascular event based on genetic analysis, lifestyle and laboratory results. In the discussions, interpretations of the genetic risk score and its meaning were incorporated into personal narratives of health and illness. We argue that instead of servi…
Putting Value on Extracellular Vesicles
Several studies over the years have paid attention to the entanglement of biomedical research and the multiplicity of expectations for scientific breakthroughs and economic gains. However, science and economy are by no means the only values attributed to the biomedical endeavour in an actual R&D project. In this article, we present an analysis of a case we studied in Finland, in which academic and commercial partners jointly studied minuscule ext…
A code for care and control
Many states make use of personal identity numbers (PINs) to govern people living in their territory and jurisdiction, but only a few rely on an all-purpose PIN used throughout the public and private sectors. This article examines the all-purpose PIN in Finland as a political technology that brings people to the sphere of public welfare services and subjects them to governance by public authorities and expert institutions. Drawing on documentary m…
Citizenship by vitality
In this article, we develop a concept of health citizenship that is specific, historically informed, and flexible to use in the analysis of different domains of medicine and healthcare. Our starting point is that health citizenship is rooted in notions about the vitality and biological existence of populations and individuals. Key tensions in citizenship vis-à-vis health and illness emerge when ideas of membership of a nation, rights and responsi…
Adjusting expectations actionable
Our paper is a case study of the making of data-driven healthcare and anticipation work done by developer-experts in a project for implementation of an integrated patient data management platform in Finland. We focus on ‘personalised treatment plan’, a trope that experts regularly use when talking about the objectives of data management reform and their wishes for datafication of healthcare. We conceive of the personalised plan not primarily as a…
Epic disappointment
This paper examines discrepancies between expectations and actual data management practices in healthcare. It develops the concept of steerability to demonstrate how guidance provided by integrated, multipurpose patient data management systems functions as a sociotechnical feature and a core value in emerging data-driven healthcare, and what happens when the promises of an all-encompassing data infrastructure fail. The paper analyses physician’s …
Political science (12 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Medicine (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Engineering ethics (5 works) · Health care (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Psychiatry (5 works)