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By Dan Swinhoe
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Goldsmiths University is conducting pioneering research into how we construct views on advances in medical technology. The report, HeathGovMatters is a project that looks to interview people involved with every aspect of healthcare, from the patients to the doctors that treat them and the researchers who create the machines that care for them. With more advanced treatments being developed all the time, this study hopes to look at the impact that these new technologies are having on the public and the people that use them, with the focus on predictive and diagnostic imaging, computer implants and developments in genetics and neurology. "There's lots of talk of potential of technology, but not a lot of research about how people, patient organisations and doctors get involved in them and what their role if any in decisions on new technology," says Julie Hartley, Post-Doctoral Researcher at Goldsmiths' department of Anthropology. The research, which focuses on neurological conditions, is being conducted over three years and is the first of its kind. It should be completed by May next year and published shortly after. Julie explains the main goal of the study is to raise public awareness of the conditions and technologies that are available. "I think the main public impact would be to get people thinking critically about the role of technology in health care and in our lives more generally. There's a lot about technology that is taken for granted in our lives, so to take away some of that and put it back in their faces and say, don't you see that technology determined an awful lot of what happens in a doctor's office?" Once the study is complete there will be a final dissemination seminar in Brussels, where the results will be presented to the European Commission. Right now we're writing for an academic audience, but that's where there'll be policy makers, and people who'll be listening to our findings with a less academic ear and a more policy-orientated ear, and there's potential for things to translate to public policy." Julie says they are not out to prove any hypothesis. "It's a matter of being in the field and having a certain awareness of what you're looking for and letting things happen and following things as they arise. The surprises are more what we didn't find rather than what we did." "For autism and migraines, the treatments for the conditions are still very much on the fringes so they're seen as experimental and not mainstream. But for epilepsy everyone knows everything, the treatments are not contentious and everyone works together in a unified group. I thought that was surprising that you can find two groups that are chaotic in terms in treatment and understanding, then you find one condition that so neat and doctors have complete control over it. And I think that comes down to the role technology and diagnosis. There's a link between technology and diagnosis, and technology and treatment. If you don't have the technology to diagnose than you can't develop treatment, they go hand in hand." There are other aspects to the study, which aim to investigate gender and generation and how things are being presented in the media. "Mostly women get migraines and mostly men get autism, but because there's so little known about Migraines, some of the women felt like they weren't being taken seriously by the doctor, because the doctor just saw them as being a whiney woman," Julie says.
www.asktheexperts.org.uk/how-we-react-to-new-medical-technology.html
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12/14/11
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www.asktheexperts.org.uk/how-we-react-to-new-medical-technology.html
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