Survival of the (Data) Fit : Self-Surveillance, Corporate Wellness, and the Platformization of Healthcare

The emergence and proliferation of smart sensor technologies has enabled the self-tracking of everyday life in an unprecedented manner as the logic of quantification and datafication extends to diverse aspects of life, including education, work, and healthcare. This development is epitomized by the numerous corporate wellness programs that are based on the use of self-tracking tools. Faced with increased competition, Fitbit, one of the most popular brands in wearable self-tracking devices, recently launched the Fitbit Care platform. Its aim is to establish itself as the leading actor in employee corporate wellness programs by providing comprehensive offerings that include self-tracking tools, apps, digital interventions, and personalized health coaching. Focusing on the Fitbit Care platform, this paper examines the intersection of self-surveillance, corporate wellness, and healthcare, highlighting the socioeconomic inequalities propagated by the ideology of dataism that privileges those who are able to engage in activities that generate desirable data.Peer reviewe

New opportunities and insights into Papaver selfincompatibility by imaging engineered Arabidopsis pollen

Pollen tube growth is essential for plant reproduction. Their rapid extension using polarized tip growth provides an exciting system for studying this specialized type of growth. Self-incompatibility (SI) is a genetically controlled mechanism to prevent self-fertilization. Mechanistically, one of the best-studied SI systems is that of Papaver rhoeas (poppy). This utilizes two S-determinants: stigma-expressed PrsS and pollen-expressed PrpS. Interaction of cognate PrpS–PrsS triggers a signalling network, causing rapid growth arrest and programmed cell death (PCD) in incompatible pollen. We previously demonstrated that transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana pollen expressing PrpS–green fluorescent protein (GFP) can respond to Papaver PrsS with remarkably similar responses to those observed in incompatible Papaver pollen. Here we describe recent advances using these transgenic plants combined with genetically encoded fluorescent probes to monitor SI-induced cellular alterations, including cytosolic calcium, pH, the actin cytoskeleton, clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME), and the vacuole. This approach has allowed us to study the SI response in depth, using multiparameter live-cell imaging approaches that were not possible in Papaver. This lays the foundations for new opportunities to elucidate key mechanisms involved in SI. Here we establish that CME is disrupted in self-incompatible pollen. Moreover, we reveal new detailed information about F-actin remodelling in pollen tubes after SI

A quantified past : fieldwork and design for remembering a data-driven life

PhD ThesisA ‘data-driven life’ has become an established feature of present and future technological visions. Smart homes, smart cities, an Internet of Things, and particularly the Quantified Self movement are all premised on the pervasive datafication of many aspects of everyday life. This thesis interrogates the human experience of such a data-driven life, by conceptualising, investigating, and speculating about these personal informatics tools as new technologies of memory. With respect to existing discourses in Human-Computer Interaction, Memory Studies and Critical Data Studies, I argue that the prevalence of quantified data and metrics is creating fundamentally new and distinct records of everyday life: a quantified past. To address this, I first conduct qualitative, and idiographic fieldwork – with long-term self-trackers, and subsequently with users of ‘smart journals’ – to investigate how this data-driven record mediates the experience of remembering. Further, I undertake a speculative and design-led inquiry to explore context of a ’quantified wedding’. Adopting a context where remembering is centrally valued, this Research through Design project demonstrates opportunities and develops considerations for the design of data-driven tools for remembering. Crucially, while speculative, this project maintains a central focus on individual experience, and introduces an innovative methodological approach ‘Speculative Enactments’ for engaging participants meaningfully in speculative inquiry. The outcomes of this conceptual, empirical and speculative inquiry are multiple. I present, and interpret, a variety of rich descriptions of existing and anticipated practices of remembering with data. Introducing six experiential qualities of data, and reflecting on how data requires selectivity and construction to meaningfully account for one’s life, I argue for the design of ‘Documentary Informatics’. This perspective fundamentally reimagines the roles and possibilities for personal informatics tools; it looks beyond the current present-focused and goal-oriented paradigm of a data-driven life, to propose a more poetic orientation to recording one’s life with quantified data

On the Role of Affective Properties in Hedonic and Discriminant Haptic Systems

Common haptic devices are designed to effectively provide kinaesthetic and/or cutaneous discriminative inputs to the users by modulating some physical parameters. However, in addition to this behavior, haptic stimuli were proven to convey also affective inputs to the brain. Nevertheless, such affective properties of touch are often disregarded in the design (and consequent validation) of haptic displays. In this paper we present some preliminary experimental evidences about how emotional feelings, intrinsically present while interacting with tactile displays, can be assessed. We propose a methodology based on a bidimensional model of elicited emotions evaluated by means of simple psychometric tests and statistical inference. Specifically, affective dimensions are expressed in terms of arousal and valence, which are quantified through two simple one-question psychometric tests, whereas statistical inference is based on rank-based non-parametric tests. In this work we consider two types of haptic systems: (i) a softness display, FYD-2, which was designed to convey purely discriminative softness haptic stimuli and (ii) a system designed to convey affective caress-like stimuli (by regulating the velocity and the strength of the “caress”) on the user forearm. Gender differences were also considered. In both devices, the affective component clearly depends on the stimuli and it is gender-related. Finally, we discuss how such outcomes might be profitably used to guide the design and the usage of haptic devices, in order to take into account also the emotional component, thus improving system performance

Quantifying the Quantified Self: A Study on the Motivations of Patients to Track Their Own Health

A new generation of patient-driven healthcare information systems (HIS) is emerging to advance traditional healthcare services and empower patient self-responsibility. Pro-fessional approaches to develop or improve HIS exist alongside evolving individual and community-shared approaches where patients take responsibility for their health data and health. Health Social Networks and the Quantified Self community are examples for such patient-driven initiatives. They inherently focus on empowering self-determination and responsibility. The success of future HIS relies – at least partially – on their engi-neers’ and developers’ capability to understand and use impulses from their respective target groups. The present study on self-tracking motivations aims to shed light on what drives people to track themselves. To this end, we conducted an exploratory survey with 150 self-trackers and developed a Five-Factor-Framework of Self-Tracking Motivations. The framework includes an inventory of five factors and a psychometrical scale of 19 items to measure individual drivers for self-tracking

Coalition Formation and Combinatorial Auctions; Applications to Self-organization and Self-management in Utility Computing

In this paper we propose a two-stage protocol for resource management in a hierarchically organized cloud. The first stage exploits spatial locality for the formation of coalitions of supply agents; the second stage, a combinatorial auction, is based on a modified proxy-based clock algorithm and has two phases, a clock phase and a proxy phase. The clock phase supports price discovery; in the second phase a proxy conducts multiple rounds of a combinatorial auction for the package of services requested by each client. The protocol strikes a balance between low-cost services for cloud clients and a decent profit for the service providers. We also report the results of an empirical investigation of the combinatorial auction stage of the protocol.Comment: 14 page

Data completeness in healthcare: A literature survey.

As the adoption of eHealth has made it easier to access and aggregate healthcare data, there has been growing application for clinical decisions, health services planning, and public health monitoring with daily collected data in clinical care. Reliable data quality is a precursor of the aforementioned tasks. There is a body of research on data quality in healthcare, however, a clear picture of data completeness in this field is missing. This research aims to identify and classify current research themes related to data completeness in healthcare. In addition, the paper presents problems with data completeness in the reviewed literature and identifies methods that have been adopted to address those problems. This study has reviewed 24 papers (January 2011–April 2016) published in information and computing sciences, biomedical engineering, and medicine and health sciences journals. The paper uncovers three main research themes, including design and development, evaluation, and determinants. In conclusion, this paper improves our understanding of the current state of the art of data completeness in healthcare records and indicates future research directions.N