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H. Tellioglu:
"Elderly Carers, Technologies, Privacy and Data Protection: Challanges in Matching User Needs and Ethics Issues";
Report No. 20, 2017; 29 pages.

Technological developments for informal care are a very important and timely topic. Many and various research projects have been devised to address the design and development of technological aids for the elderly and their close relatives caring for them (their informal carers) and, not surprisingly, pervasive technologies have emerged as strong allies to the task of providing carers with informational, emotional and tangible support, which may help them cope with their inner burden [1]. Despite the benefits that pervasive technologies can provide, current and past research has raised several important ethical considerations about their use, as reported by Zwijsen, Niemeijer [2] and Niemeijer, Frederiks [3]. In addition to that, our experience in the AAL TOPIC project shows that user-centred design approaches should also be confronted with ethics, e.g., when users ask for technologies that can in fact conflict with ethical issues. At this workshop we addressed the ethical issues that may arise from the use of user- centred design approaches for the elaboration of pervasive health technologies, with the objective of identifying elements of an ethics roadmap regarding technologies for informal care.

Technological developments for informal care are a very important and timely topic. Many and various research projects have been devised to address the design and development of technological aids for the elderly and their close relatives caring for them (their informal carers) and, not surprisingly, pervasive technologies have emerged as strong allies to the task of providing carers with informational, emotional and tangible support, which may help them cope with their inner burden [1]. Despite the benefits that pervasive technologies can provide, current and past research has raised several important ethical considerations about their use, as reported by Zwijsen, Niemeijer [2] and Niemeijer, Frederiks [3]. In addition to that, our experience in the AAL TOPIC project shows that user-centred design approaches should also be confronted with ethics, e.g., when users ask for technologies that can in fact conflict with ethical issues. At this workshop we addressed the ethical issues that may arise from the use of user- centred design approaches for the elaboration of pervasive health technologies, with the objective of identifying elements of an ethics roadmap regarding technologies for informal care.

Ethics, AAL, Design

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/publik_265529.pdf