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BSA MedSoc Digital Health special event, September 2017

18 September 2017

From the 13 – 15 September, the Tracking Ourselves? research team attended the British Sociological Association’s annual Medical Sociology conference where we presented work from phase one of the project, exploring commercial understandings of health self-monitoring. The presentation was part of a special event on digital health that both Flis and Ros participated in.

Flis gave an introductory talk that provided an overview of the sociological literature that is currently being – and that could be – brought to bear on social scientific research into the area of digital health.

This paper proved a useful foundation for presentations from Sue Ziebland (Oxford) and Fiona Stevenson (UCL) whose papers both explored the issue of how people retrieve and use health information online. Following on from them, Ben Marent (Brighton) presented findings from EmERGe, an EU-funded project to develop and evaluate an HIV patient mHealth platform.

Ros presented phase one data looking at commercial expectations of health self-monitoring practices; in the paper, she looked at the material design of products to consider how objects are designed with particular kinds of use in mind.

Panel discussion at the digital health special event. From left to right, Sue Ziebland, Flis Henwood, Ros Williams, Fiona Stevenson, and Ben Marent. Photographed by Kate Weiner.

The digital health special event ended with a panel discussion that led to great discussions around the possible overlaps and disjuncture between commercial expectations and people’s concrete, everyday practices. Questions and conversation also touched upon the interconnection of practices like self-monitoring, and people’s broader efforts to locate health information from sources other than health care professionals.

Catherine and Kate were also at the conference; Catherine presented in the Critical Public Health stream [download the abstract (PDF, 54KB)] on new configurations of public health and welfare with a focus on housing and homes. Kate gave a paper on home blood pressure monitoring [download the abstract (PDF, 53KB)] looking at pilot data from the Tracking Ourselves? project.