Responsible innovation of surveillance medicine

The 21st century has witnessed an explosion of digital devices (e.g. smartphones, health apps, wearables, digital pills, e-Health records, portable brain recording devices) that are able to track large amounts of personal data that can be used to inform clinical treatment, diagnose disease, monitor our health and well-being, and potentially predict the onset of disease, such as Parkinson's disease years before the development of observable symptoms. With 6 billion phone subscriptions reaching 87% of the world’s population, smartphones will transform our ability obtain clinical data from users and provide personalised healthcare. These developments promise to transform how medicine is performed, and provide unprecedented health benefits. Surveillance medicine also raises unprecedented ethical (e.g. privacy, surveillance) and regulatory issues (e.g. they are currently under-regulated) that need to be addressed. These technologies may also be used for non-therapeutic purposes by third parties, such as employers (e.g. wellness programs), educators, governments, the courts and insurers (with a number of companies already providing reduced premiums for allowing them to track your personal data). It is also not clear who owns or can access this data. This project will examine the technological, ethical, governance and economic challenges raised by surveillance medicine, including a qualitative and quantitative study of consumers’ views on the use of surveillance medicine technologies.