The Body Under Algorithmic Surveillance: How Technology is Changing Our Relationship with Health?

SadaNews - In the digital age, humans no longer rely solely on feeling their bodies to understand their health status. Before one feels tired or comfortable, smartwatches and apps may have already analyzed heart rate, sleep quality, stress levels, and provided ready-made explanations for what is happening inside the body.

Thus, the body transforms from a direct personal experience into a collection of numbers, graphs, and alerts, raising a new question: Do we live in our bodies as we feel them, or as screens tell us about them?

Daily Health Through the Screen

Taking care of health has become a daily digital practice. Portable devices and smartwatches track every movement, breath, and heartbeat, offering continuous recommendations about sleep, exercise, and nutrition.

However, these tools are changing the traditional relationship between humans and their bodies, as trust shifts from subjective feeling to digital readings. Over time, a person becomes an intermediary between their actual body and its digital twin, which continually offers interpretations of what should be done.

Artificial Intelligence Approaching Medical Diagnosis

Health devices are no longer limited to counting steps or measuring sleep; they have evolved to approach early diagnosis of diseases.

Wearable sensors and connected home devices collect continuous data about the body and attempt to predict health risks before symptoms appear. This shift is marketed as a transition from treating diseases post-occurrence to preemptively addressing health risks.

Billions of Dollars in the Body

This development is not only technological but also economic. The size of the market for wearable medical devices reached about $40 to $45 billion in 2024, with expectations to exceed $160 billion before the end of this decade.

The overall wearable technology market is poised to become one of the largest global technology markets, reflecting the rush of tech companies and investment funds toward this sector as a pillar of the economy of the future.

Between Medical Guidance and Serious Diagnosis

However, this rapid growth raises sensitive questions. These devices operate within algorithms developed by commercial companies, which makes the line between health advice and medical decision-making unclear.

Inaccurate readings could give users a false sense of security or cause excessive anxiety due to false alarms, potentially affecting important health decisions without medical oversight.

Who Owns Your Health Data?

One of the most concerning issues raised is the ownership of health data. Health information is considered some of the most sensitive data, yet it is now collected outside traditional medical institutions and stored on global digital platforms.

Amid differing laws between countries, concerns arise about the use of this data for commercial purposes or discrimination in insurance, employment, or even in assessing individuals' 'healthworthiness'.

A New Digital Health Divide

Digital health also reveals a new form of social inequality. Access to these technologies is linked to financial capability and digital infrastructure.

The technology intended to reduce health disparities may instead become a factor that widens them, as some enjoy the luxury of monitoring and preemption, while others remain outside this system or use less secure tools.

Ironically, the technology aimed at empowering individuals may create a continual sense of anxiety. Continuous monitoring of the body makes individuals overly tied to numbers, turning any slight change into a source of stress.

Moreover, the 'normal rate' becomes a strict standard, even though human bodies naturally vary from person to person.

Technology Outpaces Ethical Discussion

The core issue is not the technology itself but the absence of public discussion regarding the terms and limits of its use. Technological advancement and economic investment have outpaced regulations and laws, making digital health a battleground between the logic of healthcare and that of the market and profit.

Technology does not merely provide new tools; it redefines what we consider normal, safe, and acceptable. AI-supported devices intervene in our daily decisions, redraw the boundaries of the body, health, and privacy, and impose a new vision of what 'better living' means.

A Philosophical Test for Contemporary Humans

In the end, it is not just a technical question but a profound philosophical inquiry about the place of humans in the data age. When the body and health care are redefined through algorithms, the role of humans in decision-making and responsibility changes.

The real challenge is not owning smarter tools but maintaining a human space for understanding, choice, and accountability. The most dangerous aspect of this transformation is not what technology does to the body but what it does to the relationship of humans with themselves and their meaning in a world where algorithms outpace our ability to think about them.

Source: Al Jazeera