Organizing the precision clinic: arranging expertise, knowledge and technologies in cancer precision medicine clinical trials

Abstract

The aim of this article, which draws on qualitative research focussed on working practices around a genomic-informed clinical trial, is to contribute to the ongoing debate on how care professionals and biomedical investigators mobilize collective expertise in and across organizational settings to shape so-called precise knowledge in cancer medicine. In so doing, the paper discusses three interrelated issues concerning the day-to-day practices of those doing what they are supposed to do to produce knowledge capable of enacting a precision oncology regimen: (i) situatedness and reshuffling of the professional jurisdiction (work always takes place in a texture of practices influencing how the work is understood and carried out); (ii) organizing technologies (mobilization of different kinds of medical technologies to produce knowledge when carrying out work practices as a vehicle for epistemic negotiation); and (iii) articulation work (the centrality of cooperative work to enact trial work).