Perspectives on medical technology

Emerging technologies promise new treatments and enhancements for patients, research insights for doctors, and the opportunity for users to direct their own care. What influence will new developments in medical technologies have on our understanding of health and disease, as well as on our expectations of health and well-being? What ethical concerns do these technologies raise? Which ethical theories can we use to respond to these concerns?

Perspectives on Medical Technology explores ethical approaches to medical technologies with additional input from sociological and anthropological theories. This course offers insights into the role of the engineering professions and their relationship to healthcare and medicine, placing engineering in the broader context of medicine and biotechnology. We will pay special attention to how designing medical technologies requires considering the implicit norms and values of these technologies for multiple stakeholders.

We cover the following topics:

• Ethical theories and principles in healthcare.
• Emerging frontiers in healthcare and human enhancement.
• Digital healthcare and digital well-being.
• Intersectional ethical effects, such as cosmetic surgery with social media.
• The ethics of nudging and persuading for health and well-being
• Intercultural perspectives on health and human enhancement.
• Technologies for euthanasia, ageing, and life extension.

After this course, students are able to:

• Acquire knowledge about the ethical challenges of emerging biomedical technologies, including intersectional and intercultural challenges.
• Learn to identify cases in which ethical issues and stakeholder issues are relevant to new medical technologies, and formulate a scientifically and ethically well-supported viewpoints on the design, use, and management of such technologies.
• Develop the ability to apply ethical theories and philosophical concepts to critically assess and analyze medical technology in both a written and an oral format

You must meet one of the following collections of requirements

• Collection 1
• Completed Final examination Bsc program
• Collection 2
• Completed Pre-Master

• Reader