Paper short abstract:

Over the last decade tracking of individual movement has become a heavily hyped new market. Insurers and employers see ‘quantified self’ data as a new way of pricing health, wellbeing and risk. This paper considers the consequences of the marketisation of wellbeing for the provision of healthcare.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last decade, what was once the preserve of professional athletes and hobbyists, the systematic tracking of individual movement and exercise, has turned into one of the most hyped new markets. The adaptation of a number of technologies, including GPS and accelerometers, for individual use, created a generation of devices used first for sports and what became known, as the 'quantified self' movement, enabled by smartphone sensors, apps and purpose built devices like Fitbit and Jawbone. This market for 'wellbeing' is beginning to be recognized by insurers and employers who see in movement data the prospect of new ways of quantifying health, wellbeing and pricing risk and even public providers like the NHS have taken notice. This paper, which draws on a Wellcome Trust funded project on Insuring Digital Health, reflects on the challenges, both technical and social, facing the move to marketise mundane bodily movements - including the ways in which wellbeing itself comes to be enacted differently through different calculative devices and algorithms like step counters, how this can or cannot be translated into financial terms and the consequences this may have for how healthcare is paid for and by whom.