What does it mean for a healthcare system to operate ‘in real time’? A new article by the ‘Matters of Time’ project team, published in the Revista Española de Sociología (RES), shows that this oft-repeated promise of artificial intelligence (AI) actually conceals several different conceptions of time, each of which reshapes healthcare provision, management and experience in a different way.
A ‘real time’ that is not just one single one
Based on a review of specialist literature and fieldwork within the Chilean healthcare system (interviews and documentary analysis), the authors identify at least five meanings of ‘real time’ in AI innovations: immediacy, timing (the ‘right moment’), continuous monitoring, predictability and profit maximisation. These are not synonymous: each responds to different logics and levels, ranging from immediate clinical decision-making to hospital management and the economic logic of return on investment.
The article illustrates these ideas with specific examples: platforms that coordinate hospital beds and resources in real time, or traceability software that tracks each patient’s clinical journey — such as cancer monitoring systems. It becomes clear that the promise of immediacy and foresight is not neutral: it sets priorities, allocates care and redefines power relations.
Beyond the context of public health, this study proposes an analytical framework — the macro, meso and micro layers of ‘real time’ in healthcare — and raises questions for a sociology of time, temporalities and temporalisation: what temporal orders do these systems establish? what ‘chronographies of power’ do they constitute?, and how do they transform our experience of time?
Reference: Román-Brugnoli, J. A., Castillo-Sepúlveda, J., and Ángel Toledo, A. (2026). Artificial intelligence and real-time applications in healthcare: challenges for a sociology of time, temporalities and temporalisation. Spanish Journal of Sociology, 35(3), a310.
📄 Read it as open access in the Revista Española de Sociología · DOI: 10.22325/fes/res.2026.310
🎧 And have a listen to the project’s podcast, ‘In Honour of Matters of Time’, on Spotify.