M-HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES: CONFIGURING BODIES AND HEALTH IN SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY

Deborah Lupton, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney

What is m-health?

• Using Web 2.0 platforms incorporating:• social media such as Facebook, YouTube,

Twitter, blogs and wikis • mobile wireless computer technologies such

as smartphones and tablet computers• to measure health indices, provide treatment

regimens and promote health.

Medical biometric devices

• Smart pill boxes• Blood glucose• Blood chemistry readings• Blood pressure, heart rate and cardiac output

readings • Movement sensors

Commercial health apps

• Exercise programs• Digitalised scales and blood pressure devices• Menstrual cycles and ovulation patterns• Sleep patterns• Hearing tests• Pregnancy and labour logs• Fat and lean body mass using a caliper• Alcohol intake

Theorising the body/machine interface

• The cyborg body• The post-human body• The surveillant medical gaze• Surveillant assemblages• Data-doubles• Participatory surveillance

Some new approaches …

• The spectacular body• Prosthetic culture• Technology use as performance• Domesticating technologies – the social life of

things

Exhibit from Body Worlds

Example of medical app

Stelarc – Third Hand

Stelarc – Third Ear

Theorising Stelarc’s work

Electronic sensory becomes our new sensory skinThe body performing beyond the boundaries of its skinThe body as a nexus or node of collaborating agents‘We are all Stelarcs now’

Future research questions

• What are the implications for subjectivities and embodiment in the world of m-health?

• How are the assemblages of m-health technologies/practices/flesh enacted and lived?

• What are the political dimensions and power relations inherent in the use of these technologies?

• How will privacy (or loss of privacy) be defined and experienced in the context of these media?

• What are the implications for how people conduct their everyday lives and intimate relationships?

More specifically …

• Will the ‘nagging voices’ of the health promoting messages automatically issuing forth from a person’s mobile device be eventually ignored by its user?

• Will m-health technologies produce a cyborg, post-human self in which the routine collection of data about bodily actions and functions is simply incorporated unproblematically into the user’s sense of selfhood and embodiment?

• How will concepts of ‘health’ itself be shaped and understood in a context in which one’s biometric indicators may be constantly measured, analysed and displayed publicly?

• Will the ‘objective’ measurements offered by mobile devices take precedence over the ‘subjective’ assessments offered by the senses of the fleshly body?