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ABSTRACT
Anticipation of the future use of innovative technologies and of their respective societal impact is at the core of technology assessment and responsible research and innovation. Stakeholder and user involvement is often thought to be important for broadening the design and specification of technology before its use; meanwhile, demand analysis is typically used to determine which type of already developed technology is best suited to adequately meet a particular societal demand. Thus, we ask whether the process of demand analysis can be used to enable stakeholders and users to envision and assess future technologies. This question will be answered regarding assistive technologies for people with dementia by focusing on the respective care-giving arrangement, an area where up to now no or only low-level technologies have been in use. The demands of these people for support are typically expressed in nontechnical terms. We find that the involvement of technology developers helped these participants to begin imagining more specific potential technical solutions and to assess them with respect to their future desirability.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the entire team of the project Movemenz ‘A Mobile and Independent Way of Life for People with Dementia’ in which the results presented here were gathered. Our special thanks go to Silvia Woll, Claudia Brändle, and Marcel Krüger.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Prof. Dr Michael Decker did his PhD in Physics at the University of Heidelberg and obtained his habilitation (Technology Assessment) at the University of Freiburg in 2006. Since 2004, he has been a member of the directorate of ITAS and, since 2009, professor for technology assessment at KIT. He has headed the division ‘Informatics, Economics, and Society’ at KIT since 2015.
Nora Weinberger studied environmental engineering and process engineering at the Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus. The focus of her work is on ‘water’ and ‘soil’ (Diplom). Since 2007, she has worked as a scientist at ITAS dealing with technology monitoring and technology assessment in care-giving arrangements.
Dr Bettina-Johanna Krings studied political science, sociology, and anthropology (MA) at the University of Heidelberg and did her PhD in sociology at University of Frankfurt/Main. Since 1995, she has worked as a scientist for ITAS dealing technological innovations and their impacts on working structures. She heads the ITAS research area ‘knowledge society and knowledge policy.’
Johannes Hirsch studied computer science at KIT, main focus were assistive technologies for elderly, especially for people with dementia (Diplom). Since 2015, he has worked as a scientist at ITAS dealing with constructive technology assessment in care taking arrangements.
Notes
1. See https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/h2020-section/societal-challenges. For detailed information: https://www.rri-tools.eu/; http://engage2020.eu/; http://www.great-project.eu/; http://www.livingknowledge.org/projects/perares/; http://www.progressproject.eu/; http://res-agora.eu/news/; http://responsibility-rri.eu/.
3. The action context is thus chosen from among the seven fields of social needs mentioned above, in this case demographic change, for which the EU hopes that explicit solutions will be found on the basis of RRI.
4. See the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie, Psychotherapie und Nervenheilkunde (DGPPN); Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurologie (DGN) (eds.): S3-Leitlinie ‘Demenzen.’ Empfehlung 95 http://www.dgn.org/leitlinien/3176-leitlinie-diagnose-und-therapie-von-demenzen-2016. Last Accessed: 31 August 2016.
5. In the care-giving arrangement, it is possible to consider other actors such as the operator of the nursing home and the corporate body responsible for it. This study focused only on the narrower context of action since the question was initially which assistive technology would be acceptable to the actors without considering the ability of the institution to implement it.
6. See on this https://www.wegweiseralterundtechnik.de.
7. See for greater detail in Weinberger and Decker (Citation2015, pp. 37ff).
9. Only some of the results of the Movemenz project are reported here to support the line of argument pursued in this paper. The comprehensive report of the results is to be published soon at KIT Scientific Publishing.
10. All quotes from the interviews are colloquial speech in German, translated by the authors.
11. German long-term care insurance levels.