Interrogating the promise of technology in epilepsy care: systematic, hermeneutic review.

Abstract

Technology development is gathering pace in epilepsy with seizure detection devices promising to transform self‐care and service provision. However, such accounts often neglect the uncertainties, displacements and responsibilities that technology‐supported care generates. This review brings together a heterogeneous literature, identified through systematic searches in 8 databases and snowball searching, to interrogate how technology becomes positioned in epilepsy care. We took a hermeneutic approach in our analysis of the 206 included articles, which resulted in the development of a conceptual framework surfacing the underlying logics by which technology‐supported epilepsy care is organised. Each of these logics enacts different techno‐scientific futures and carries specific assumptions about how (often imagined) ‘users’ and their bodies become co‐constituted. Our review shows that studies in this area remain primarily deterministic and technology‐focused. Few draw phenomenological insights on lived experiences with epilepsy or use social theory to problematise the role of technology. We propose future directions for sociotechnical, theory‐driven studies of technology in epilepsy care and offer a framework transferable across other long‐term conditions.