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Consumer genomics and mobile health provide health-related information to individuals and offer advice for lifestyle change. These 'technologies for healthy lifestyle' occupy an ambiguous space between the highly regulated medical domain and the less regulated consumer market. We argue that this ambiguity challenges implicit distinctions between what is medical and what is related to personal lifestyle choices within current regulatory systems. In this article, we discuss how consumer genomics and mobile health devices give rise to new ways of creating (and making sense of) health-related knowledge. We also address some of the implications of harnessing, rather than denying, the hybridity of mobile health devices, being situated between medical devices and consumer products, between health and lifestyle.

Original publication

DOI

10.1016/j.atg.2015.02.001

Type

Journal article

Journal

Applied & translational genomics

Publication Date

03/2015

Volume

4

Pages

44 - 49

Addresses

Social Science Health and Medicine Department, King's College London, United Kingdom.