Your health, their choice? The hidden inequalities of personalised health apps

The rapid expansion of personalised healthcare, often accompanied by claims of revolutionary improvements in wellbeing and disease prevention, warrants closer scrutiny. Personalised health apps have become increasingly prominent, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, raising important social and ethical questions about accessibility, equity, and responsibility for health.Drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of biopolitics and Deborah Lupton’s scholarship on digital health and self-tracking, this commentary argues that personalised health apps do not simply support self-care, but may individualise responsibility for prevention through digital forms of self-governance, with uneven consequences for different populations. In doing so, they raise questions about unequal opportunities to act on personalised health advice and the collective responsibilities of health promotion.