By 2060, one in three Europeans will be over 65 years old. Two out of three pensioners will have at least two chronic conditions. These demographic changes have already started to challenge our welfare systems. As the number of seniors grows, there are fewer people to take care of them.

This issue’s special report is about the future of ageing. How can technology improve healthcare services and make us work smarter toprovide better care? During the spring and summer of 2014, the PACITA project engaged more than 300 European stakeholders with the aim of identifying opportunities as well as challenges related to care technology. Although European countries have responded to the demographic challenges in quite different ways, technology seems to be a common factor for policy makers planning care in the future.

Paro, the robot seal, is one example. While dogs and other pets have frequently been used in nursing homes to calm patients with dementia, Paro represents a radical shift – using robots to provide emotional care. It raises some ethical questions: is it okay to have patients with dementia cuddling and caring for a robot? Or should tasks involving emotional care being left to humans?

Would you leave your grandmother with a robot nurse?

 
Marianne Barland on behalf of The Editorial Team Editorial

If the cost of sports cars had fallen at the same rate as genome sequencing, we could all be driving around in Ferraris that cost 40 cents, reported a scientist from Stanford Medical School recently. But in the rush for the 1,000-dollar (or euro) genome, are we forgetting the many other costs and concerns that come with ‘more data for less money’? Is technology moving faster than our ability to make sense of it?

Using genome based information and technologies for the benefit of public health is dependent on vast biobanks of data. And those data need to be linkable. From what we know already, it will not be our DNA or genes alone that will determine aspects of our health; we need to incorporate factors related to our environment and lifestyles. We need big data.

The privacy (or not) of those data is the focus of this issue’s Special Report. How, when, and with whom, should genomic data be shared? Once whole genome information is included, it is generally believed that medical data cannot be effectively anonymised. Privacy is dead. Yet the use of biobanks and the genetic links they could reveal (even if so far, they have proved elusive) is the structure behind the future public health vision of predictive, preventative and personalised healthcare.

The chaos surrounding the UK Government’s attempt to roll out the care.data project linking local doctor and hospital records (against a vigorous ‘opt-out’ campaign) shows just what happens when policy makers underestimate the need for public engagement. As the PACTIA Future Panel on public health genomics noted: “The extent to which genomics data are collected, stored, shared, and for what purposes, is first of all a political and societal issue and should not be regulated via individual consent alone.”

The Editorial Team

Our lives are filled with interactions with digital technology. At school, work and at home, a lot of our tasks are done digitally. Whenever we log in (and even when we don’t) we leave behind huge amounts of digital traces – our digital exhaust.

These digital traces are valuable for many different actors. City planners want to track our movements through the city to develop better public transportation. The police use information from social media to get an overview of a crime  scene. Our online searches for flu treatments might help scientists predict where the next outbreak of the disease might be.

The recent NSA controversy has opened many eyes to the implications this might have on our privacy. Things you thought were private might not be so private after all. Can we trust the companies (and governments) that use our data to also protect our privacy?

In this issue of VolTA, the special report is dedicated to Big Data. You can read the story of how a teen pregnancy was revealed by a retail store and how telecoms companies use Big Data for development projects. While global companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google have been using Big Data techniques for some time, it is still not certain if and how
decision-makers can implement this in their decision processes. The UN Global Pulse is one example of a project that has taken the first baby steps into data-driven decision making. TA institutions can now take an active role in mapping the possibilities and consequences of Big Data and give decision makers informed advice on how to proceed in this area.

How policy makers take advantage of the possibilities and how they address the challenges of the Big Data world will be critical for us all.

Marianne Barland, on behalf of the Editorial Team Editorial

Living things are quite different from dead things. Or so we feel. Although my 13-year old daughter thinks she cannot live without her mobile phone, some of us still believe that things that breathe are perhaps more sacred than things that do not breathe.

We are starting to understand complex organisms in terms of their components and processes. But, we take comfort in acknowledging that within even the humblest bacterium there is an indefinable ‘something’.

So it might be difficult to imagine that the wet stuff of animate beings and the dead stuff of man-made mechanical devices are rapidly merging.

Yet, that is exactly what is happening. Biology is becoming technology, and technology is becoming biology. ‘Making Perfect Life’, an ambitious, multi-disciplinary European technology assessment study, shows how these two radical bio engineering  megatrends will dramatically impact our lives and society. Think of Google glasses, digitally ‘improving’ our reality, or personalised medicine based on genome sequencing, or brain implants that can improve or cure us. And think of robot soldiers that decide for themselves when to kill. Do we want to be told to take our medicine by a robot nanny?

Politicians and policymakers: read the Special Report and get your yellow marker pens out. Regulatory issues in abundance. We need to take a reality check. Are we prepared for just how far and fast bioengineering is progressing? Are you up to speed with the technological breakthroughs associated with NBIC convergence?

With bioengineering becoming ever more ambitious and potent, discussions and political decisions are needed before ‘damage control’ is all that is left as a policy option. Technology shapes our society. But society also needs to be comfortable with it. That is what Technology Assessment addresses.

What exactly do we want to merge? And what do we want to remain pure?

Pascal Messer, on behalf of the Editorial Team
 

Welcome to the third issue of volTA, a magazine on Science, Technology and Society in Europe. VolTA is an initiative of fifteen Technology Assessment institutes that work together in the European PACITA project. Their aim is to contribute to responsible innovation. New technology makes our lives easier and helps us to explore problems but it also confronts society with questions and dilemmas. It is these questions that European Technology Assessment institutes address.

Nanotechnology is an example par excellence of an innovative technology that seems to offer great opportunities but at the same time raises questions and concerns. Is it safe? Well there’s no simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. When it comes to food using nanotechnology, consumers are particularly suspicious and cautious. The food industry’s secretive approach to product development does not allay these fears. TA-institutes in Europe have performed several studies on the public acceptance of nanotechnology. Unsurprisingly, transparency is the key. Consumers need to be informed about the benefits and risks of technology and involving people in the decision making process is critical.

The simple truth is that when consumers know what’s going on, when they understand the motives behind new developments – when their concerns are acknowledged – they are more likely to accept new products on the market. Only when governments and food companies take that into account will nanotechnology fulfil its promise.

Antoinette Thijssen, on behalf of the Editorial Team

We all know the internet is a great place for those who seek information, hope to meet people or want to buy stuff. But the internet can also be a dangerous place. Like the real world, the virtual world has its thieves and criminals. That’s why government campaigns warn us to be very careful when using passwords, or social security and credit card numbers in internet transactions.

But governments should be a lot more careful themselves.

The special report in this second issue of Volta is on cyber security and the vulnerability of critical infrastructures like electricity grids and water supply systems. Because many control systems for these critical infrastructures are accessible directly from the internet, they can be hacked.

And, as experts say: what can be hacked, will be hacked.

Thankfully the awareness within government organizations is high and rising. Across the world reports are being written, tough words are spoken, action lists formulated. But it’s not enough. We need new laws and treaties. In our global world, we need a new organization to battle cross-border crime in cyberspace.

Security and safety also feature in another critical topic covered in this edition of Volta – genetically modified organisms. GM crops are grown on a significant scale in other continents, but not in Europe. Why? Is it possible for Europe to maintain this isolated position? What will be the tipping point for the (currently opposed) public in terms of accepting GM products?

I hope this second issue of Volta offers you inspiring insights and opinions. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions.

Antoinette Thijssen
 

Welcome to the first issue of Volta, a brand new magazine on Science, Technology and Society in Europe.

I am not telling you anything new by saying that we are fellow citizens of Technotopia. Surrounded by machines and devices that make our lives easier and connected to the outside world day and night through mobile phones and the internet.

New technology helps us to explore problems – think about climate change – but it also confronts society with questions and dilemmas. It is these questions that European technology assessment institutes address.
Their aim is to contribute to responsible innovation.

In this first issue of Volta we look at a field that exemplifies this struggle between society and new technology: our energy supply. We can’t do without energy. We all know that a secure supply for the future is critical. But at the same time Europeans have become experts in delaying or even stopping the introduction of energy initiatives like shale gas drilling and carbon storage injection projects – even wind farms. Is technology the problem or the solution? Can we learn from the Scottish Islanders who love their turbines, or the Italian organisation aiming to banish the Nimby Syndrome in exchange for community benefits? How essential is transparent information and communication for authorities as well as citizens? These issues at the heart of the energy agenda are the focus of this first edition.

Volta is an initiative of fifteen Technology Assessment Institutes that work together in the European Pacita-project, and will be published twice a year. Please do let us know what you think – email us and share your thoughts.

Antoinette Thijssen, on behalf of the Editorial Team