Grant: Operating Grant

The technologies that enter the health care system often generate usability problems (e.g., underuse, overuse or misuse) and questionable social transformations (e.g., pervasive monitoring, dependence upon specialized expertise, being and living "at risk"). Nevertheless, whether their design -the shape they take, the functions they perform and what users may accomplish through their use- has been well thought out is rarely questioned. The goal of our three-year study is to examine the ways in which a prospective method developed in the Netherlands can enrich current understandings of health innovation design. Our research will focus on three areas where technological opportunities are already emerging and which will alter significantly the moral choices of future generations: enhancement technologies in teenagers, preventive interventions for genetically "at risks" adults, and ageing in a high-tech world. Our team will create plausible scenarios that depict how technical and social changes may affect, within a 20-year timeframe, these three health care areas. We will develop video clips and short stories illustrating each scenario. The three scenarios will then be debated by members of the public in face-to-face focus groups and through an online forum. Our premise is that the use of fiction within deliberative contexts that foster participants' creativity and reflexivity will enable our team to examine a large range of values and usability issues associated to these three thematic areas. As more complex forms of health innovation keep emerging, there is an acute need for user-friendly tools for debating and pondering the direction taken by technological change in health care. Intervening earlier in the development of health technology may not only help reduce undesirable effects, but may also pave the way for the design of more valuable innovations.