This article examines how diagnostic and therapeutic technologies influence patients’ illness experiences. Six ways have been identified by analyzing various examples that technology can transform the experience of illness and health. First, technology may raise disease awareness by revealing asymptomatic signs or markers (imaging techniques, blood tests). Second, the technology can be used to identify disease risk factors (e.g., high blood pressure or genetic tests that reveal risks of falling ill in the future). Third, technology can influence and change the course of an existing illness. (e.g., the way blood sugar measurement affects the perceived symptoms of diabetes). Fourth, therapeutic technologies have the potential to recast our experiences of disease as diseased rather than unfortunate (e.g., assisted reproductive technologies or symptom-based diagnoses in psychiatry). Fifth, technology impacts illness experiences by changing social-cultural norms and values around various diagnoses. Sixth, technology impacts and changes our perceptions of health compared to disease and illness. The phenomenology of technology and health should be considered in light of this typology of how technology causes illness and related conditions. How do patients perceive and comprehend medical technologies and their outcomes? The phenomenological approach to illness as a lived, bodily being-in-the-world is critical for better understanding and evaluating the effects that medical technologies may have on our health, not only in terms of defining, diagnosing, and treating diseases but also in terms of making us feel more vulnerable and less healthy in various ways.

How medical technologies shape the experience of illness – PMC

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5797484/

In this article we explore how diagnostic and therapeutic technologies shape the lived experiences of illness for patients. By analysing a wide range of examples, we identify six ways that technology can (trans)form the experience of illness (and health). …