D1.4.2 - Report on acceptance into society Description of the deliverable content and purpose This deliverable compares the main results of the e-SENSE user and social acceptance inquiries towards potential users that are presented in the e-SENSE D1.4.1 - Therefore, these key acceptance challenges are analysed with regard to the existing literature and by the means of complementary interviews with experts when necessary (lack of literature or too specific issues that requires synthetic expertise). The objective is to complement the results that have been obtained from the user centric studies about acceptability in order to put in perspective the analysis of these results and to consolidate the recommendations to the designers of ambient intelligent mobile applications. The key acceptance issues that are analysed with regard to the literature and experts’ vision are the following ones: These issues are already considered within e-SENSE project with technical solutions in the developments of the system architecture, and especially within the security, trust and privacy framework which is developed in task T2.3 [48]. Mood sensing Mood sensing is a relatively new area of work, with early applications in this being introduced now. Existing implemented applications or experiments anticipate the forthcoming development of many commercial systems able to sense and to react to mood factors. Several research and development projects as well as industrial actors are involved in the field of mood sensing. The ambient intelligent area is far from being the most active one in this research field. For example, many outcomes can be learnt from the research in the Affective Computing branch of the Artificial Intelligence research field. Even if mood sensing is a sensitive aspect there is already existing literature that proposes solutions, or at least principles, to design mood aware technology and applications within an ethical framework. Ethical and privacy issues The semantic field of the ethical dimension is revolving around complementary concepts that are closely related to privacy issues. Since the e-SENSE concept is relying on capturing and processing context information, the keys factors in the user’s perception of privacy have to be kept in mind: Report on Evaluation of Human Impact [46] with the state of the art. The most significant acceptance issues that have been identified and analysed in these previous user centric inquiries are extracted and summarised. These acceptance issues are not specific to the acceptability of the e-SENSE concept but it concerns more generally the acceptability of future Ambient Intelligent (AmI) systems. In effect the analysis is based on the users’ feedback towards the e-SENSE audiovisual demonstrators [51] aimed at testing the limits of the user and social acceptance through futuristic and sometimes extreme application scenarios (e.g. mood sensing in personal security services). -
Feasibility and ethical issues in mood sensing application scenarios -
ethical and privacy issues in the personal application space -
impact on professional relationships (with patients and within professionals) in the healthcare community -
ethical and privacy issues in the healthcare sector -
human factors in the healthcare sector -
Who they think is receiving information -
What they think will be done with the information -
How sensitive they feel the information is -
The context in which the information is disclosed. Professional-patients relationship The changes in relationships anticipated by the professionals interviewed and also to be found in the literature stress the need for adaptation to the technological changes by patients and healthcare professional. This process already started with the introduction of the internet within the healthcare context. New professional self-concepts seem to be needed, developing from a rather diagnostic and (powerful) active function towards a health-consultation one. Complementary, the role of the patients will change from a passive receiver of health-instructions towards the „informed patient". Within these issues there are drawbacks as well as chances to be considered. Ethical issues in the healthcare sector The question of the responsibility is arising since users fear that the technology could fail or could provoke privacy issues even if becoming more and more secured and autonomous in monitoring patients. Contracts to deal with the responsibility of stakeholders could have to be negotiated. One of the main ethical issues addresses the access cost to technology assisted healthcare and the potential consequences on the equity in access to healthcares in general. At last, the consequences on the professionals’ employment and on the working conditions could also represent a risk for the adoption of such technology by the professionals. Human factors There are numerous human-factor guidelines available that are applicable also for the design of healthcare applications. Regarding the design and training aspects, the developers have to bear in mind by whom and how frequently a system will be in use. Complex systems (due to their functionality and specialty) require training. Systems used very seldom need be easy to use. Generally, the patient, when using a system, e.g., for home-monitoring should also be in control of a system, but should not be overwhelmed by the information/data. A balance between responsibilities should be cautiously developed.
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