Collaborative Innovation and wearable mHealth technologies

Wearable activity trackers are commercially available tools designed to promote, nudge, and reward physical activity. These devices are part of a range of mobile health technologies (mHealth) presented as enabling individuals to take accountability and responsibility for their personal health. As a result, businesses are beginning to engage with mHealth as an avenue to promote employee wellbeing. A strategy which companies hope will help combat issues of absenteeism and presenteeism. Indeed, Fitbit, the market leader in activity tracking technology, offers a wellness program to businesses which they state has enrolled seventy Fortune500 companies.

Whilst the ideology underpinning wearable trackers and mobile health is presented by technology enthusiasts as a positive one, research undertaken over the last five years has painted a clouded picture. Quantitative data suggests that mHealth attracts a younger, well-educated, and affluent customer, with issues of access and literacy, indicative of the digital divide, potentially excluding and alienating non-users. Moreover, at least half of all users disengage with an activity tracker after six months. Meanwhile, qualitative research suggests that for some users the technology can be motivating and useful, whilst for others it heightens feelings of anxiety, stress, and guilt.

This is the point of departure for the research to be conducted. Increasingly businesses are beginning to offer activity tracking technologies to their employees in an effort to sustain a healthy workforce. However, from an organisational studies perspective, introducing new and innovative technologies premised around health and wellbeing raises a number of important questions. How does the technology shape the social relations within the workplace? Furthermore, to what extent does activity tracking technology (designed to operate 24/7) promoted by a place of work have an affect on wellbeing at the home? Whilst the technology is designed to promote wellbeing, does the additional pressure of physical activity to an employee's workload increase stress and anxiety? Previous research has addressed theoretical issues around activity tracking technology, drawing on topics of digital labour and surveillance. There is now a pressing need to capture and understand the experiences of users engaging with activity tracking technology in different environments, notably within the workplace.

Given the importance of employee wellbeing it may be incorrect to assume that such technology will have a universally positive impact amongst employees, with ramifications for both social interactions and personal introspection. Furthermore, companies producing consumer health technologies have notoriously developed both the hardware and software in the silos of Silicon Valley and ignored important consumer-based research. The present research therefore offers multiple pathways to impact. In seeking to identify the benefits and pitfalls of mHealth based wellbeing programs the findings may be utilised to offer best practice guidelines to companies seeking to promote and disseminate activity tracking technologies to their employees. Furthermore, the research has the potential to inform the production of future health technologies issued as part of wellbeing initiatives.