When people suffering from the long-term effects of COVID-19 faced more questions than answers from doctors, they began collecting data on themselves using fitness watches to better understand their disease. University of Copenhagen researcher Sarah Homewood was one of them and has since researched the phenomenon. According to her research, while self-monitoring can offer people more certainty and control over the disease and their bodies, it can also lead to anxiety.
"Time to get up", "You've walked less than average", "You can still reach your activity goal"... An ever-growing number of people are being paced forward over the past few years by small wearable technology - typically worn around the wrist like a watch, with built-in sensors to monitor their physical activities and health.
Whether as sports watches, fitness trackers or software enabled smartwatches, these devices are now being used to manage disease as well, serving beyond their intended purpose as fitness-tracking technology.
Long COVID is an example of a disease where sufferers have used fitness tracking watches, contradictory to their intention and design, to limit strenuous activities and conserve energy. E.g. by making sure their heartrate didn't go to high on walks or deciding whether or not to shop for groceries based on the steps already tracked.
Sarah Homewood, an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science, has experimented with this on both her own body and through research. She is behind two studies, both of which examine the use of fitness technology for long COVID-related self-monitoring.
In her most recent article, she examines the use of fitness trackers among twenty-one individuals with long COVID and concludes that self-monitoring has both good and bad aspects for users:
"Across all participants, the most common traits were a sense of greater control and certainty about the disease, better opportunities to document symptoms to oneself, family and their doctors, but also situations of uneasiness or anxiety triggered by use," says Sarah Homewood.
The researcher highlights one participant's visit to a float tank as an example. The visits had been a peak of relaxation for the woman, until data from her fitness tracker reported elevated stress levels, after which the woman stopped going to the activity.
"There is a clear tendency for data to eclipse experience. The data users get can have a major impact on how they assess situations. In some contexts, it can be a source of unrest, while in others, certainty and security," says the researcher.
Not used as intended
The results also support her first research study on the subject - a so-called autoethnographic study of her own illness and use of self-monitoring. The researcher's experiences as a long-COVID sufferer using of a Fitbit watch didn't just evolve into her research study, they served as her personal path to recovery.
"I quickly realized that I needed to use the watch contrary to its intentions. I had to counter its design. Whenever the watch informed me that I had walked far and needed to keep going to reach a new distance goal, it was my cue to sit down. Because the watch provided me with 'hard evidence' to compare my experiences with, I could actually begin to piece together what worked and what exacerbated problems for me," says the researcher.
Sarah Homewood was able to adjust her physical activities based on the watch's heart rate readings, and in doing so, avoid paying a hefty price for overexerting herself. Ever since, she has seen this "hack" of the watch's functionality to control her own physical activities mirrored in the new study's participants.
