Smart textiles: transforming the practice of medicalisation and health care

Abstract

Smart textile medical devices are forms of clothing that use sensors and fabrics to monitor bodily processes and communicate with data systems through wireless transmission. To investigate the co-evolution of digital technologies and health care practices, this study draws on focus group and fieldwork data to analyse the sociological implications of the creation of two smart textile devices: one – the bellyband – will replace the tocodynamometer and foetal heart rate monitor during labour and birth in hospitals and the other – the babyband – will replace the cardiopulmonary monitor in neonatal intensive care units. Analysis of potential users’ views of smart textiles demonstrates the contemporary contours of medicalisation and surveillance medicine. Smart textiles blur the boundary between hospital/medicine and home/daily life. In this blurring, medicalisation becomes “cozy” or “comfortable” and surveillance takes on a friendly form. Smart textile medical devices thus fit into broader trends in health care in which hospitals are designed to be homelike and intimate even as patients and devices become fully integrated into data systems.