‘Mhealth’

As I sit here cupping my unusually bloated tummy and wondering why I still have a craving for ‘Kinder Buenos’ after demolishing two bars, it finally occurs to me that it’s about the right time for my monthly menstruation to begin. While I consider myself to be quite in tune with my body, often noticing small and subtle changes such as my ‘pre-period bloat’, it got me thinking of the alternative methods of tracking my menstrual cycle such as fertility apps which are the inspiration for today’s post. For those who aren’t familiar, menstrual or fertility apps are phone applications which can generate an estimated day of ovulation, a five-to-six-day fertile window and the date of your next period. Self-care digital technologies which monitor various health concerns are at the forefront of current tech as well as academic and medical discussions. These technologies in a very Foucauldian framework become a way to self-diagnose or ‘discipline’ the body (Foucault, 1977). These technologies at their core alter how we consume, communicate and internalise information about the ’healthy’ body.

Typically, when we think about digital spaces we see them as being essentially disembodied landscapes. However, this perspective doesn’t engage with the ways in which digital technologies or ‘mhealth’ apps create new avenues to experience the body or the fact that digital technologies mediate and are mediated by embodied experience. ‘Mhealth’ (mobile health) apps have been described as ‘technologies which produce a digital cyborg body…they are able to act not only as prostheses, but also as interpreters of the body’ (Lupton, 2012). ‘Mhealth’ apps such as fertility apps are placing our body within the digital sphere in a very embodied sense, they alter how we construct notions of our body and our health both when we use the app as well as when we are not. These new technologies have also been praised for empowering individuals by providing them with more control over their biological bodies. In a way, they represent a revolution against the biomedical establishment. For some, ‘mhealth’ apps take up arms against the process of medicalisation, whereby human conditions or problems are enveloped into the medical realm and seen to be firmly in the domain of medical practitioners (Bendelow, 2002). Instead, ‘mhealth’ apps challenge the unsettling imagery of us as lifeless zombies waddling into our nearest GP’s office… Perhaps a slight exaggeration but the point is that these technologies have been hailed for providing users with a greater sense of autonomy.

If we look at many of the ‘mhealth’ apps that have been developed they’re all about placing the body within a digital context, think fitness apps, fertility apps, and apps about sexual performance, all of them positioning the body within a digital sphere allowing us to construct new approaches to healthcare. While this idea of the ‘digital body’ has been welcomed by many, it is not without its critics. Marissa J. Doshi positions these technologies within feminist discourse to reveal some of the more problematic aspects of ‘mhealth.’ Doshi highlights that the mobile applications designed to accommodate the health concerns of women focus primarily on women’s reproductive bodies (Doshi, 2018). But, there’s also a new wave of digital health and it’s called digital therapeutics, a subset of digital health, which leverages evidence based behavioural interventions such as CBT to combat the psychosomatic nature of many health concerns of both men and women. In this way, they offer an integrative approach to health, breaking down the Cartesian mind –body dualism that has long existed in healthcare (Goldberg, 2002). While ‘mhealth’ apps are a fairly recent phenomenon they carry vast implications for the ways in which we approach healthcare as well as shape the trajectory of human experience which is increasingly venturing into the realm of virtual spaces.

References

Bendelow, G. (2002). The Lived Body.

Doshi, M. (2018). Barbies, Goddesses, and Entrepreneurs: Discourses of Gendered Digital Embodiment in Women’s Health Apps. Women’s Studies in Communication, 41(2), pp.183-203.

Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984. Discipline And Punish : the Birth of the Prison. New York :Pantheon Books, 1977.

Goldberg, L. (2002). Rethinking the birthing body: Cartesian dualism and perinatal nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 37(5), pp.446-451.

Lupton, D. (2012). M-health and health promotion: The digital cyborg and surveillance society. Social Theory & Health, 10(3), pp.229-244.