Paper short abstract:

This paper foregrounds the specific kinds of data generated by the artificial pancreas, a set of interlinked, body-mounted devices for users with Type 1 diabetes, and explores their implications for epistemological and metaphysical transformations on the part of artificial pancreas users.

Paper long abstract:

Many personal medical devices (PMDs) generate data about people's movements, activities, and bodily status, in many cases offering users granular knowledge about hitherto unknown aspects of their own bodies. This paper foregrounds and explores the specific kinds of data generated by the artificial pancreas, a set of interlinked, body-mounted devices that sense and respond to varying blood sugar levels in users with Type 1 diabetes. This intervention generates large amounts of data regarding insulin dosage and (especially) blood sugar levels, providing significantly greater detail regarding the latter than is available using standard monitoring methods. Through analysis of interviews conducted with participants in a recent overnight study of the artificial pancreas in pregnant women, this paper draws on Weickian theories of 'sensemaking' to explore how data can reconstitute micro-scale attitudes to the self and technology. These transformations can occur at the epistemological level (e.g. through the revelation of unsuspected micro-scale blood sugar fluctuations) as well as at the metaphysical level, e.g. through the experience of living as the subject of automated, algorithm-driven treatment enacted through wearable devices. Moreover, these transformations can be both empowering and oppressive in different ways, offering new potential for action and improved self-care at the same time as generating new kinds of challenges and problems to be overcome. Consequently, this chapter demonstrates the multiple and complex ways in which data - a somewhat intangible resource, yet also a ubiquitous and personal one - increasingly plays important roles in technology-mediated experiences of health and illness.