Despite longstanding attempts to conceptualise and measure value in biomedicine and healthcare, there is no single agreed definition of what value is. Instead, and as such, value is often taken as given or constructed in economic terms. In this paper, we argue that taking the meaning of value as given, or reverting to technocratic or economic dimensions of value, obscures the non-technical and societal dimensions of value construction and operationalisation in healthcare and biomedical practices. Through a comparative study of five cases of biomedicine and healthcare, we aim to bring out the socioeconomic and political processes that make a thing valuable for society and its implications. Our contention is that a clearer understanding of what makes something valuable (or not) is the first step towards what socially reflexive and responsible valuing of biomedicine and healthcare ought to be.

尽管长期以来试图在生物医学和医疗概念化和测量值，有什么价值没有单一的公认的定义是。取而代之的是，价值通常是从经济角度考虑给予或赋予的。在本文中，我们认为采用给定的价值含义，或恢复到价值的技术官僚或经济维度，会模糊医疗保健和生物医学实践中价值建构和运营化的非技术和社会维度。通过对五种生物医学和医疗保健案例的比较研究，我们的目标是找出使事物对社会及其意义有价值的社会经济和政治过程。我们的观点是，对什么东西是有价值的（或不）更清晰的认识是什么向生物医药和医疗保健的社会反思和负责任的估价第一步应该是。