Digital Health Technologies and Digital Data: New Ways of Monitoring, Measuring and Commodifying Human Embodiment, Health and Illness

Frequent statements are now made in the medical and public health literature about an imminent revolution in health care, preventive medicine and public health driven by the use of digital devices and associated apps, websites and platforms. However it is important to adopt a more critical approach when assessing the impact and implications of digital health. Digital health technologies potentially generate different ways of thinking about, practising and experiencing medicine, healthcare and public health. From a perspective that is informed by critical social and cultural theory, these changes have the potential to challenge entrenched conceptualisations and experiences of illness, health, disease and medical care and practice. In this chapter, following an overview of the range of digital health technologies that are currently in use, I focus on the digital data that are generated from these technologies, discussing the implications for the digital knowledge economy, data security and privacy, social inequalities and civil rights.

[1]  Dylan B. George,et al.  Big Data Opportunities for Global Infectious Disease Surveillance , 2013, PLoS medicine.

[2]  D. Lupton,et al.  The commodification of patient opinion: the digital patient experience economy in the age of big data. , 2014, Sociology of health & illness.

[3]  R. Ericson,et al.  The surveillant assemblage. , 2000, The British journal of sociology.

[4]  Robyn Longhurst,et al.  Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries , 2000 .

[5]  Jonas Lerman,et al.  Big Data and Its Exclusions , 2013 .

[6]  Jules Polonetsky,et al.  Privacy and Big Data: Making Ends Meet , 2013 .

[7]  J. Manyika.  Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity , 2011 .

[8]  M. Rosenthal,et al.  Wellness programs and lifestyle discrimination--the legal limits. , 2008, The New England journal of medicine.

[9]  M. Savage,et al.  Reassembling Social Science Methods: The Challenge of Digital Devices , 2013 .

[10]  Mark Andrejevic,et al.  The big data divide , 2014 .

[11]  Deborah Lupton,et al.  Understanding the Human Machine [Commentary] , 2013, IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag..

[12]  L. Locock,et al.  Biographical value: towards a conceptualisation of the commodification of illness narratives in contemporary healthcare. , 2013, Sociology of health & illness.

[13]  K. Crawford,et al.  Big Data and Due Process: Toward a Framework to Redress Predictive Privacy Harms , 2013 .

[14]  David Lyon,et al.  Liquid Surveillance: A Conversation , 2012 .

[15]  D. Lupton.  Quantifying the body: monitoring and measuring health in the age of mHealth technologies , 2013 .

[16]  David Beer.  Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation , 2013 .

[17]  Deborah Lupton.  Quantified sex: a critical analysis of sexual and reproductive self-tracking using apps , 2015, Culture, health & sexuality.

[18]  T. Murdoch,et al.  The inevitable application of big data to health care. , 2013, JAMA.

[19]  Data & Civil Rights: Health Primer , 2014 .

[20]  Viktor Mayer-Schnberger,et al.  Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think , 2013 .

[21]  Deborah Lupton,et al.  Self-Tracking Modes: Reflexive Self-Monitoring and Data Practices , 2014 .

[22]  D. Haraway.  A manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s , 1987 .

[23]  H. Nissenbaum.  A Contextual Approach to Privacy Online , 2011, Daedalus.

[24]  Rachel Prentice.  Bodies in Formation: An Ethnography of Anatomy and Surgery Education , 2012 .

[25]  M. Swan.  Health 2050: The Realization of Personalized Medicine through Crowdsourcing, the Quantified Self, and the Participatory Biocitizen , 2012, Journal of personalized medicine.

[26]  Sara Degli Esposti.  When big data meets dataveillance: the hidden side of analytics , 2014 .

[27]  Roberto De Vogli,et al.  Neoliberal globalisation and health in a time of economic crisis , 2011 .

[28]  D. Lupton.  The digitally engaged patient: Self-monitoring and self-care in the digital health era , 2013 .

[29]  Alena Glajchová,et al.  LUPTON, Deborah (2012): Medicine as Culture. Illness, Disease and the Body in Western Societies (3rd edition). London: Sage. , 2015 .

[30]  Deborah Lupton,et al.  Apps as Artefacts: Towards a Critical Perspective on Mobile Health and Medical Apps , 2014 .

[31]  John Cheney-Lippold,et al.  A New Algorithmic Identity , 2011 .

[32]  Roger Burrows,et al.  E-Scaped Medicine? Information, Reflexivity and Health , 2003 .

[33]  Deborah Lupton.  Health promotion in the digital era: a critical commentary. , 2015, Health promotion international.

[34]  Rob Kitchin,et al.  Towards Critical Data Studies: Charting and Unpacking Data Assemblages and Their Work , 2014 .

[35]  Jules Polonetsky,et al.  A Theory of Creepy: Technology, Privacy and Shifting Social Norms , 2013 .

[36]  I. Kohane,et al.  Finding the missing link for big biomedical data. , 2014, JAMA.

[37]  D. Boyd,et al.  CRITICAL QUESTIONS FOR BIG DATA , 2012 .

[38]  Paolo Totaro,et al.  The Concept of Algorithm as an Interpretative Key of Modern Rationality , 2014 .

[39]  D. Lupton.  M-health and health promotion: The digital cyborg and surveillance society , 2012, Social Theory & Health.