Gunnarsdottir, Kristrun and Dijk, Niels van and Fotopoulou, Aristea and Guimarães Pereira, Ângela and O'Riordan, Kate and Rommetveit, Kjetil and Vesnic-Alujevic, Lucia (2014) Making sense of wearables : new-emerging markets and mediascapes. [Report]
Abstract
This document reports on the events of the networking/embedding event, organised by the Epinet WP3 team in Brussels Nov 2013. It summarises observations and key findings. The aim of the event was to involve the expertise of professionals from a range public and private agencies involved in the development of wearable sensor technologies and ICT innovation policy. We learn from their input of new-emerging roles for wearable sensors, how they are situated in visions of the future of healthcare and self care, of changing lifestyles and occupations. We learn of complications in clinical practice and in medical devices regulation. We learn of expectations, of what personalisation can stand for, of conceptions of behaviour and of well-being more generally. Finally, we observe a distinct disconnect between top-down policy developments on the future delivery of personalised healthcare to European citizens and grass-roots developments in self care and in the self-management of medical conditions. The results of this consultation are key to finalising the embedding stage of the case study on wearable sensors, and they provide major input into our attempts to integrating the many different assessments of this innovation domain.