02: Big Data – Self-Determined Individual Health Behaviour or Skilful Manipulation?

Every “step” we take online creates data which allow somebody to draw conclusions about our preferences, thus generating more and more health-specific data. This information can be used to enable people to take better health-related decisions: through customised reminder services and suggestions, for example, as to which kind of exercise you could take and what kind of healthy diet you can eat in your current surroundings, or even through the transmission of health data to physicians to enable therapeutic fine-tuning. There is a fine line, however, between creating opportunities for individual decision-making and manipulating people.