Medical Technologies: A Barrier or Opportunity in Healthcare for Transgender People?

Abstract

Abstract Trans people experience discrimination in healthcare to a higher degree than cis people and as a consequence trans people tend to wait longer before seeking care. The aim of this thesis is to investigate what role medical technologies play in this. This was done through interviews with healthcare workers and people working with trans rights. Additionally, documentation from several medical technologies and documents from public procurements were investigated. The study shows that the idea of gender being static and binary is deeply rooted in medical technologies, which creates a variety of problems in healthcare for trans people. The problems range from forcing healthcare workers to misgender patients to potential incorrect measurements and completely barring trans people from medical systems. These problems could be avoided if developers and the healthcare system were more critical of gender norms and actively worked to create more inclusive solutions. This thesis gives a number of recommendations on how this could be done. Furthermore, medical technologies have the potential to make healthcare more accessible and inclusive of trans people if new technologies are designed correctly.