Luiza Spiru and Stefan Alexandru Sterea
Ana Aslan International Foundation, Bucharest, Romania
Smart, ICT-based assistive technologies represent a new, effort and cost-saving solution for the long term assistance of seniors. The use of ICT-based smart technologies involves the gathering of information about vital processes for monitoring their health state. The ethical and legal issues are critical aspects in obtaining this biofeedback. We are presenting an overview of these aspects, paralleled by several lessons learned as medical partner and pilot site in projects dealing with the user-centered design of biosensors prototypes.
Several important ethical aspects must be assured when working with biosensors: the informed consent form; personal data protection, networks security; communication confidentiality; management of user’s complaints; withdrawal request and exit strategy issues and ethical auditing. An important ethical issue are the methods for managing the exit strategy (the discomfort experienced by the senior when he decides to withdraw sensors use). Other challenges are the scarcity of standardized ethical guides, as well as their adaptation to the local socio-cultural particularities. The ethical aspects related to the awareness of the end-user about the usefulness of biosensors are also discussed. The trustiness, accessibility and acceptance of various batteries of biosensors depend, in a great measure, on their compliance with the requested ethical and legal provisions.