Quantified Lives and Vital Data: Some Concluding Remarks
Farrington, C;
Lynch, R;
(2018)
Quantified Lives and Vital Data: Some Concluding Remarks.
In: Lynch, R; Farrington, C, (eds.)
Personal Medical Devices: People and Technology in the Context of Health.
Palgrave Macmillan, London, UK, pp. 283-289.
ISBN 9781349952342
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95235-9_12
Permanent Identifier
Use this Digital Object Identifier when citing or linking to this resource.
Reflecting on the contributions to this edited volume, this chapter draws out some of the key themes and issues raised by social science approaches to personal medical devices (PMDs). The chapters illustrate that what PMDs (and other health technologies) ‘do’ and ‘are’ may be quite different. They are variously embedded through practices, spaces, times, and relationships and so cannot be considered as stand-alone objects. Likewise, particular boundaries that PMDs bring into focus—e.g., self/other, bodily boundaries, medicine and medical boundaries, and bodily/health data—are not fixed or prescriptive but rather dynamic and changing. Investigating PMDs therefore allows exploration of dynamic and situated intersections of people, health, and technology—the quantified lives that we increasingly live and the vital data produced by these.