Stakeholders’ Views on Responsible Assessments of Assistive Technologies through an Ethical HTA Matrix

Erik Thorstensen
Additional contact information
Erik Thorstensen: Work Research Institute, OsloMet—Oslo Metropolitan Univeristy, NO-0130 Oslo, Norway

Societies, 2019, vol. 9, issue 3, 1-32

Abstract: Assessments of novel assistive technologies for use in home-based services has been documented to be performed in a variety of ways and often with a rather narrow focus on safety and effect or effectiveness. In order better to understand the place for wider forms of assessments of assistive technologies, the current study presents a combination of the Ethical Matrix and the Socratic approach for assessment of health technologies—the Ethical HTA Matrix. This matrix was filled with content based on a case of a GPS localization system, which was validated by stakeholders. In a next step, central decision-makers in assistive technologies and stakeholders were interviewed concerning their views on this methodology. Mainly, the matrix was seen as very comprehensive, but too detailed with an abundance of information. Nevertheless, some informants suggested concrete uses of the matrix in their organizations. Some understood the matrix more as an epistemic tool aiming at providing an overview of the state of knowledge, while others identified a normative potential in the matrix that could be implemented in health innovation processes for the home-based services, in particular when discussing novel solutions and working methods with health professionals and care workers.

Keywords: responsible research and innovation; assistive technologies; ethical matrix; health technology assessment; GPS tracking; ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 A14 P P0 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/9/3/51/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/9/3/51/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsoctx:v:9:y:2019:i:3:p:51-:d:243910

Access Statistics for this article

Societies is currently edited by Ms. Farrah Sun

More articles in Societies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().