Thanatechnology and the Living Dead: New Concepts in Digital Transformation and Human-Computer Interaction.

In a digital society, shall we be the authors of our own experience, not only during our lifetime but also after we die? We ask this question because dying and bereavement have become even harder, and much less private, in the digital age. New big data-driven digital industries and technologies are on the rise, with promises of interactive 3D avatars and storage of digital memories of the deceased, so they can continue to exist online as the "living dead" in a digital afterlife. Famous rock and roll icons like Roy Orbison, Frank Zappa, Ronnie James Dio, and Amy Winehouse have famously been turned into holograms that can once again give "live" performances on the touring circuit, often pulling in large audiences. Death studies, dying, and grief have become virtual in the 21st century. We live in truly unprecedented times for human-computer interactions. Thanatology is the scientific study of death, dying, loss, and grief. In contrast to the biological study of biological aging (cellular senescence) and programmed cell death (apoptosis), thanatology employs multiple professional lenses, medical, psychological, physical, spiritual, ethical, descriptive, and normative. In 1997, Carla Sofka introduced the term thanatechnology as "technological mechanisms such as interactive videodiscs and computer programs that are used to access information or aid in learning about thanatology topics." Onward to 2021, the advent of social media, the Internet of Things, and sensors that digitize and archive nearly every human movement and experience are taking thanatechnology, and by extension, digital transformation, to new heights. For example, what happens to digital remains of persons once they cease to exist physically? This article offers a critical study and snapshot of this nascent field, and the "un-disciplinary" sociotechnical issues digital thanatechnologies raise in relation to big data. We also discuss how best to critically govern this new frontier in systems science and the digital society. We suggest that new policy narratives such as (1) the right to nonparticipation in relation to information and communication technologies and (2) the planetary public goods deserve further attention to democratize thanatechnology and big data. To the extent that systems science often depends on data from online platforms, for example, in times of pandemics and ecological crises, "critical thanatechnology studies," introduced in this article, is a timely and essential field of scholarship with broad importance for systems science and planetary health.

Panvigilance: Integrating Biomarkers in Clinical Trials for Systems Pharmacovigilance.

Drug safety and pharmacovigilance are rapidly changing with biomarkers and new technologies such as artificial intelligence. However, we need new ideas and application contexts for integration of biomarkers and emerging technologies in modern pharmacovigilance. A new concept, panvigilance, has been recently introduced for proactive "stress testing" of new drug candidates in panels of patients or healthy volunteers identified by biomarkers, and who are situated in population edges in terms of pharmacokinetic (PK) and/or molecular target interindividual variability. Panvigilance aims to provide upper and lower bound estimates for drug performance under conditions that mimic population edges. Subsequently, it becomes easier to extrapolate pharmacovigilance signals with regard to individuals who reside in between the population edges. In this expert review, we explain that the prefix "pan," meaning everything or all, refers to the three-pronged panvigilance goals to (1) decipher the full population scale variability in medicinal product PKs and molecular target variability, (2) empower forecasting of pharmacovigilance signals within and across populations through knowledge of biomarker variations worldwide, and (3) integration of pharmacovigilance signals across government ministries, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders through, for example, institutional innovation such as centers for panvigilance. We note that panvigilance and pharmacovigilance are complementary, and underscore the added value of panvigilance for global clinical trials. Panvigilance offers a new opportunity for meaningful biomarker application in clinical trials beyond traditional contexts such as personalized medicine. In sum, panvigilance is a systems approach to pharmacovigilance and poised to innovate risk governance in medicinal product development and clinical trials.