ABSTRACT
This chapter draws attention to the realm of digital health platforms, that is, platforms designed and used primarily to monitor, store, track, share and/or record health-related personal information. Given the increasing relevance of these platforms to individual users, social groups, health care services, and society overall, a growing body of research has explored their impact on the emergence or hindering of participatory practices related to health and illness. The chapter draws on this research to look at platforms from two distinct perspectives. First, it engages with studies focused on the political economy and the technological infrastructure of contemporary digital health platforms. It explores a series of aspects hindering bottom-up practices aimed at overcoming both the ephemeral rhetoric of “participation” often used by corporate providers and the technological constraints inherently inscribed in platformed systems. The chapter then progresses by building on sociocultural and material interpretations of digital health practices to explore the agency exerted by platform users despite adverse political economic structures and constraining technologies. It does so by drawing attention to scholarly work interested in everyday digital health practices that domesticate technological devices, algorithmic systems, and data in their social, cultural, and material contexts.
