On-site PhD conferral Ricky Janssen

Keywords: digital health, HIV self-testing, ethnography, care

"Caring together with digital technology- Exploring HIV self-testing practices with an app called HIVSmart!"

Have you ever done a self-test? What was it like? Were the results what you expected? This thesis shows that doing a self-test and knowing the result is not necessarily as simple as it is made out to be in health policy and guidelines – it relies on the support of different people, places and things. Self-testing contributes to how we understand our body, what we do and how we relate to health services and the people around us. Therefore, it is worth stopping to investigate what people do with self-tests. This thesis explores how an app, called HIVSmart!, plays a role in supporting people doing an oral HIV self-test. It also explores how or why people interact with self-tests and digital health in particular ways, how digital health and self-tests are made to work in particular settings, and how self-tests and digital health contribute to (good?) health care practices.

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