| Chairs | Michael Decker |
| Day and time | Thursday, March 14th, 2013: 10:00 – 13:15 |
Michael Decker (Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis)
Technology Assessment (TA) on health issues is special in several ways. There is a strong normative aspect in it, simply saying that we want to help people suffering from disease. “Techniques” or “arts” of healing range from drug development to alternative, homeopathic treatments, from care taking to high-tech medicine. Ethical questions are very relevant since we need to permanently reformulate the idea of how we – as modern societies – should treat our sick people in a socially acceptable way.
Ageing is not a disease at all. Strictly speaking, it is the opposite, since you need a certain health constitution to get old at all. However, the number of people reaching older ages is increasing. This trend is accompanied by a falling birth rate in many countries. The first trend alone and even more so in combination with the second one lead to so-called “ageing societies”, i.e. societies with an increasing average age of the population. This will most likely result in an increasing demand for (health) care taking in the next decades. Here, various technologies are developed to meet this demand, with the concrete applications ranging from technical support for human care takers to full substitution of individual care taking actions.
This session dealt with these challenges from a general perspective of health TA as well as from a more specific angle with respect to ageing societies.
The abstracts of the session can be read here.
Presentations of the session:
- S. van Egmond/ M. Heerings/ I. Geesink
Quantified health: Lifelong measuring
- V. Rogalewicz/ K. Kotajná/ V. Šinkorová/ H. Dománková
- W. Drozenová
Autonomy and competence in ageing society
- E.H.M. Moors
Healthcare innovations in an ageing society
- M. Scheermesser/ H. Becker/ M. Früh/ Y. Treusch/ H. Auerbach/ R. Hüppi/ F. Meier
