Background The rapid diffusion of wearable electronic health monitoring devices (wearable devices or wearables) among lay populations shows that self-tracking and self-monitoring are pervasively expanding, while influencing health-related practices. General practitioners are confronted with this phenomenon, since they often are the expert-voice that patients will seek. Objective This article aims to explore general practitioners’ perceptions of the role of wearable devices in family medicine and of their benefits, risks, and challenges associated with their use. It also explores their perceptions of the future development of these devices. Methods Data were collected during a medical conference among 19 Swiss general practitioners through mind maps. Maps were first sketched at the conference and their content was later compared with notes and reports written during the conference, which allowed for further integration of information. This tool represents an innovative methodology in qualitative research that allows for time-efficient data collection and data analysis. Results Data analysis highlighted that wearable devices were described as user-friendly, adaptable devices that could enable performance monitoring and support medical research. Benefits included support for patients’ empowerment and education, behavior change facilitation, better awareness of personal medical history and body functioning, efficient information transmission, and connection with the patient’s medical network; however, general practitioners were concerned by a lack of scientific validation, lack of clarity over data protection, and the risk of stakeholder-associated financial interests. Other perceived risks included the promotion of an overly medicalized health culture and the risk of supporting patients’ self-diagnosis and self-medication. General practitioners also feared increased pressure on their workload and a compromised doctor–patient relationship. Finally, they raised important questions that can guide wearables’ future design and development, highlighting a need for general practitioners and medical professionals to be involved in the process. Conclusions Wearables play an increasingly central role in daily health-related practices, and general practitioners expressed a desire to become more involved in the development of such technologies. Described as useful information providers, wearables were generally positively perceived and did not seem to pose a threat to the doctor–patient relationship. However, general practitioners expressed their concern that wearables may fuel a self-monitoring logic, to the detriment of patients’ autonomy and overall well-being. While wearables can contribute to health promotion, it is crucial to clarify the logic underpinning the design of such devices. Through the analysis of group discussions, this study contributes to the existing literature by presenting general practitioners’ perceptions of wearable devices. This paper provides insight on general practitioners’ perception to be considered in the context of product development and marketing.

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Practices related to health are circulated widely on YouTube. With a health psychology perspective, we present a study to understand health and wellbeing-related practices of a group of popular, professional YouTubers from the audio-visual content they produce. We first identify, via polytextual thematic analysis, six thematic healthrelated categories, and use them to label a set of 2500 YouTube videos. Agreement among three independent annotators was acceptable for these health-related categories. We then present an analysis of speech transcriptions and visual content, demonstrating that distinctive patterns exist for these health-related categories. These include linguistic markers and specific scene types and objects. Finally, with an interpretability focus, we study the feasibility of classifying health-related video categories in a binary setting, and compare performance across features, finding best accuracy for linguistic features (74-87%), and various patterns of linguistic and visual relevance used for the classification of health categories. The results shows promise to support mixed-methods research in health psychology, combining manual analysis and data-driven methods. More generally, our work contributes to the understanding of current health practices shared and promoted on social video. CCS Concepts• Human-centered computing → Ubiquitous and mobile computing; Ubiquitous and mobile computing design and evaluation methods.

BACKGROUND The rapid diffusion of wearable electronic health monitoring devices (‘wearable devices’ or ‘wearables’) among lay populations shows that self-tracking and self-monitoring are pervasively expanding, while influencing health-related practices. General practitioners (GPs) are confronted with this phenomenon, since they often are the expert-voice that patients will seek. OBJECTIVE This article aims to explore GPs perspectives on the benefits and risks related to wearable devices and examine their views on their future development of these devices. METHODS Results were collected during a professional symposium among 19 Swiss GPs through mind maps, an innovative methodology in qualitative research that allows for time-efficient data-collection and presentation. RESULTS Data analysis highlighted that wearable devices were often described as user-friendly, adaptable devices, that could enable performance monitoring and support medical research. Benefits included: support for patients’ empowerment and education; behaviour change facilitation; better awareness of personal medical history and body functioning; efficient information-transmission and connection with the patient’s medical network. However, GPs were concerned by the lack of solid scientific validation, lack of clarity over data protection, and the risk of stakeholders’ predominant financial interests around their diffusion. Other perceived risks included the promotion of an overly medicalised, anxiogenic health-culture, and the risk of supporting patients’ self-diagnostic and self-medicating practices. GPs also feared an increased pressure on their workload and the general compromising of the doctor-patient relationship. Finally, they raised important questions on wearable devices’ design and development in the future, highlighting a need for GPs’ and medical professional to be involved in the process. CONCLUSIONS Wearable devices play a more central role in the development of health-practices in daily life, while also affecting the doctor-patient relationship. It is therefore essential to clarify the underpinning logics behind the development and marketing of such devices, whose extensive use may not necessarily be desirable from the GPs’ perspective. This article provides some insights that should be considered in the context of product design, development and distribution, for wearable devices to make a positive impact on general practice.