Data sense-making and communicative gaps on sundhed.dk

This paper examines personal experiences of digital health data on the Danish eHealth platform sundhed.dk. Taking a patient’s view, the paper understands data sense-making as an embodied communicative practice. The empirical analysis, consisting of 24 purposefully sampled interviews, is brought together with the conceptual framework describing and unpacking the ambivalences to be found in digital health data experiences into themes of data ambivalence, emotional ambivalence, communicative ambivalence and identity ambivalence. This in-depth empirical description of patients’ ambivalent experiences contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the profound changes digital health data is having on a patients’ everyday lives. In particular, it emphasizes the communicative challenges arising from the constant availability of digital health data anytime, anywhere, and calls for further research into the new and unfamiliar communicative situations in which patients are placed and forced to navigate in

Practices of self-tracking in infertility treatment: How bodily awareness is constituted

Background: The femtech industry has grown extensively in recent years and in infertility treatment, the practice of digitally self-tracking menstrual cycles has become a popular way for patients to manage, monitor and deal with issues of fertility. Aim: The purpose of this study is to investigate how patients’ self-tracking practices affect bodily awareness. Methods: The study draws on 20 qualitative interviews with 12 patients, recruited through a private clinic in Copenhagen, Denmark. Interviewees were selected based on the criteria: age, treatment type and length, and engagement in self-tracking practices. All interview material was thematically coded. Findings: The analysis results in three main themes: 1) self-tracking as a tool for knowledge creation and planning purposes, 2) self-tracking as body-awareness maximizing process, and 3) self-tracking as a professional and emotional process. Discussion: Through self-tracking practices, the menstrual cycle becomes a multiple object, interpreted and acted upon in diverse ways – all of which, however, aim to optimize conditions for conception. Conclusions: Self-tracking in infertility treatment affects bodily awareness in three distinctive ways: 1) it creates emotional ambivalence, 2) it places patients in an ambivalent position towards health professionals, and 3) it creates ambivalence towards patients’ understanding of the menstrual cycle

Therapeutic drug monitoring of monoclonal antibodies in chronic inflammatory diseases: A snapshot of laboratories and applications across Europe

The European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) action ENOTTA (The European Network on Optimising Treatment with Therapeutic Antibodies in chronic inflammatory diseases) was launched in 2022. To pave the way for harmonization of analytical methods for quantitation of serum levels of therapeutic antibodies in research and clinical settings, ENOTTA recently performed an online survey mapping laboratories in the field. The survey, which contained 30 questions surrounding therapeutic drug monitoring of relevant drugs and anti-drug antibodies, was distributed via the ENOTTA and European Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory networks. Among 63 respondents across Europe, 45 reported analytical activity, with a range of utilized methods. Future engagement of as many sites as possible will enable comparison of methodologies and facilitate progress in the field