At the 2018 conference of the European Association for the Study of Science & Technology (EASST) in Lancaster, UK, the Chris Freeman Award was given to a book edited by Marianne Boenink (Philosophy, faculty of BMS), Harro van Lente (Maastricht University) and Ellen Moors (Utrecht University):
Emerging Technologies for Diagnosing Alzheimer’s Disease: Innovating with Care (Palgrave MacMillan 2017).
In honour of Chris Freeman, this award is given to a publication which is a significant collective contribution to the interaction of science and technology studies with the study of innovation. Selection is based on the successful development of social approaches to the dynamics of innovation, originality, and better understanding of the pursuit of innovation for societal and environmental goals.
The book is one of the results of a research project on ‘Responsible early diagnostics for Alzheimer’s disease’ which was funded by the NWO programme Responsible Innovation. The authors are very pleased that the jury recognized the importance and value of the practice-based approach of responsible innovation they propose in this volume, not only for the Alzheimer field, but also for other domains.
The book explores international biomedical research and development on the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. It offers timely, multidisciplinary reflections on the social and ethical issues raised by promises of early diagnostics and asks under which conditions emerging diagnostic technologies can be considered a responsible innovation. The initial chapters in this edited volume provide an overview and a critical discussion of recent developments in biomedical research on Alzheimer’s disease. Subsequent contributions explore the values at stake in current practices of dealing with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, both within and outside the biomedical domain. Novel diagnostic technologies for Alzheimer’s disease emerge in a complex and shifting field, full of controversies. ‘Innovating with care’ requires a precise mapping of how concepts, values and responsibilities are filled in through the confrontation of practices. In doing so, the volume offers a practice-based approach of responsible innovation that is also applicable to other fields of innovation.
Weblink to the publisher’s site and the table of contents: https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9781137540966
