Health Beyond Metrics: From Data to Identity

In a time where good health is increasingly seen as something to aspire and is progressively framed as an individual responsibility, personal informatics (PI) promise to empower people through continuous monitoring and self-tracking. PI embody a data-driven framing of health, representing health primarily through numerical metrics. In doing so, PI reinforce the quantified-self movement, affecting how people perceive, interpret and act based on their data. This movement privileges people with higher health literacy and data literacy who can interpret and translate data into actionable insights, while overlooking the relationality of health.

In response, we present a relational framing of health from the perspective of the individual, supporting a more holistic understanding of health beyond metrics. We introduce this perspective as health identity, facilitating awareness of health within everyday life and enabling individuals to formulate personally relevant health goals and activities.

To explore this relational framing of health, we conducted a qualitative study in which participants were given the means to decide how they want to script their health. Through participatory activities, individuals reflected on and mapped their health identity and engaged in self-experimentation with self-defined health objectives. This approach fostered inclusive and meaningful engagements with personal health.

We argue that advancing PI with a focus on health identity can inform the design of technologies that are perceived as useful by a larger part of society. This advancement also raises the question: Can individual health be supported by PI alone, and should it be framed primarily through what can be measured?