# (Self)care by Numbers: Self-Monitoring Technology and the Technology of a UK Public Health Trial

## TL;DR

This paper examines how people in a public health trial interact with self-monitoring technologies and how these interactions reveal hidden aspects of care.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a critical anthropological perspective on self-monitoring technologies in public health trials.

## Key findings

- Self-monitoring technologies are embedded within trial technologies that obscure contextualized care practices.
- Attention to (self-)care reveals what is neglected in health technology trials.
- This approach challenges entrenched biomedical values in health technology.

## Abstract

In an era of increasing interest in self-monitoring technologies to improve population health, this article considers how participants in a public health trial engaged with such technologies. Exploring how their engagement sits with the logic of self-monitoring and the technology of the trial highlights that the trial’s blackboxing of its objects of study obscure the deeply contextualized care practices through which such technologies “work.” Attending to (self-)care and what the trial neglects offers a means of disrupting entrenched values in its objects, relations, and logics, questioning what is important and for whom through a critical anthropology of/through health technology.

I explore self-monitoring technologies and how these sit within trial technologies, attending to (self-)care and other neglected things as a potential means of disrupting biomedical values.