Mark Schweda has been appointed member of the Nuffield Council working group on the future of ageing. The working group will "examine ethical questions in relation to the role of science and technology in helping people live well in old age".

For further information on this working group click here.

The EIDEC-Project has recently started.

Dementia care is undergoing a major transformation as a consequence of demographic aging and technological developments. New tracking, sensor and assistive technologies have become available to monitor and support the behavior of people with dementia. The aim is to promote independent living, detect or predict impending problems, relieve caregiver burden, and increase the overall quality and cost-efficiency of care. These socio-technical systems are using artificial intelligence, semantics and human interpretations. This project consortium examines ‘co-intelligent sensory dementia care’ (CISDEC) systems in the everyday life environment of informal as well as institutional care settings. By combining approaches from technology assessment and empirically informed ethics, we investigate social acceptability and moral assessment of stakeholders from different backgrounds (patients, family caregivers, professional caregivers) using qualitative empirical methods. The ethical analysis focuses on two important norms of dementia care: privacy and empowerment. The project will provide reports, articles and demonstration videos to inform developers in engineering/informatics as well as researchers in the field of ethical, legal and social aspects, stakeholders (e.g., patient organizations) and policy makers how to incorporate ethical and social concerns of users and other stakeholders in technology development and dementia care. 

Project partners:
Silke Schicktanz (University Medical Center Göttingen), Thomas Kirste (Faculty for Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; Rostock University), Stefan Teipel (Medical Faculty of the Rostock University, and Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE) in der Helmholtzgemeinschaft), Andreas Hein (Department of Health Services Research, School for Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Oldenburg), Mark Schweda (Department of Health Services Research, School for Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Oldenburg )

Funding (2020-2022):
German Federal Ministry for Education and Research
Grant no. 01GP1901B

The new book Aging and Human Nature, that was co-edited by Prof. Dr. Mark Schweda, has recently been published. This book focuses on ageing as a topic of philosophical, theological, and historical anthropology. It provides a systematic inventory of fundamental theoretical questions and assumptions involved in the discussion of ageing and old age. For further information click here.