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Paper short abstract

Based on interviews with patients and doctors in Germany, we examine how lifestyle devices reshape medical authority through patient-generated data (PGD). We demonstrate how caring for epistemic limits unfolds across conflicting temporalities of continuous monitoring and temporary consultations.

Paper long abstract

Lifestyle devices and health apps have introduced new forms of patient-generated data (PGD) into medical consultations. Drawing on 35 interviews with patients and physicians in Germany, we explore how medical authority is negotiated when such data circulate between continuous personal self-tracking and temporary professional care. PGD create specific temporal tensions: continuous monitoring produces a sense of immediacy and anticipation for patients, while physicians rely on episodic consultations and validated timeframes of diagnosis. From a medical perspective, lifestyle devices and health apps produce masses of messy data that cannot be accounted for in the limited timeframes of consultations. These polychronic temporal regimes shape how limits are recognised and cared for, what counts as relevant evidence, whose time matters, and when knowledge becomes actionable. Patients experience illness by learning to “listen” to their bodies through devices yet emphasise the need for professional interpretation; doctors value engagement but question reliability based on their expertise, often reframing PGD as supplementary rather than authoritative. Caring for limits thus becomes a joint practice: maintaining trust by acknowledging experience without dissolving boundaries of expertise. We argue that continuous digital self-tracking does not erode medical authority but reconfigures it temporally – through rhythms of measurement, waiting, validation and response that sustain the fragile balance between empowerment and dependence in everyday healthcare.