Photodiagnosis of genital herpes and warts: a sociomaterial perspective on users' experiences of online sexual health care.

Online sexual health services potentially transform modes of engagement with service users. We report findings from an in-depth interview study with users of a photo-diagnosis service offered by an established UK-based online sexual health service (SH:24). Adopting a sociomaterial theoretical perspective, we analyse the interviews for descriptions of health care with and through the affordances offered by SH:24. We focus on how the interactions of service users and clinicians with nonhuman agents opened or closed off capacities for better health and wellbeing. Our findings explore navigating online and in-person service options; digitising bodies; temporal affordances; the tension between anonymous and personalised care; configuring digital privacy; and when automated care is not enough. We conclude that emerging practices of care within digital health services delivered by more-than-human collaborations reconfigure experiences of diagnosis and treatment and require detailed attention to understand how they create and close down opportunities to improve or maintain health.