Experience as Evidence: The Sciences of Subjectivity in Healthcare, Policy and Practice. (360G-Wellcome-105158_Z_14_Z)

The patient experience has long been regarded as a valuable source of knowledge in healthcare. Traditionally framed as the 'subjective' counterpart to 'objective' biomedical knowledge, experiential knowledge has been used to critique biomedical reductionism and promote patient-centred care. Bolstered by patient activism, health consumerism, and concerns over standards of care, over the last fifty years a range of technologies that collate patient experiences, such as customer satisfaction survey s and Patient Experience Trackers (PET), have moved into the medical mainstream. More recently, internet technologies are enabling the large-scale collection, aggregation and quantification of different forms of experiential data, enhancing and transforming these pre-existing technologies of experience. Despite the ubiquity and prominence of technologies for turning subjective experience into portable forms of knowledge, their history, assumptions and practical implications are rarely examin ed. This symposium will bring together a leading interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners to explore the new forms of knowledge being produced through the codification and quantification of patient experiences, and the consequences this has for the future of healthcare. It will encourage innovative, cross-disciplinary, dialogue, tackling emergent themes, such as the quantified-self movement and the neurosciences, which stretch the boundaries of traditional research on the patient ex perience.