007Self-diagnosis and self-treatment in Western Medic...
Blue sky Policy Alert 007
| FP7 themes | health | agro | ict | nano | energy | environment | transport | ssh | space | security |
| ERA goals | mobility | infrastucture | rtd institutions | knowledge sharing | joint programming | cooperation |
| Author(s) | Anthony Walker, Joe Ravetz, Rafael Popper, Thordis Sveinsdottir | |
| Contributor(s) | Anna Kononiuk, Denis Loveridge, Andrej Magruk, Dorota Pawlak, Sally Randles, Ozcan Saritas, Phil Shapira, Alexander Sokolov | |
| Manifestation | Gradual development | Potential impacts in Europe infrastructures  people's lives legislation & regulation  economy & business  defence & security  government & politics environment & ecosystems  science & technology |
| Importance for EU | | |
| Strategic attention | by 2030 by 2050 | |
| Type of impact | Extremely positive | |
| Inspired by | Brainstorming session and group discussions in the iKNOW Workshop in Manchester (February 2010) | |
| Related to | ||
| Keywords | self-treatment, self-diagnosis, safety, privacy, ICT, convergence, Health | |
Self-diagnosis and self-treatment in Western Medicine.
Research topic
Abundance of medical information on the Internet has given rise to the practices of self diagnosis and self treatment. Equipment whereby patients can monitor their blood pressure and heart rate is also readily available. The trend of an ageing population will also mean that public health systems will be met with increasing challenges. As waiting times get longer, patients may resort to diagnosing and treating themselves. Rapid developments in nanotechnology and ICT could indicate that sophisticated diagnosis and treatment systems could be developed in the near future.
Objective
Research should focus on examining how access to new diagnostic/treatment technologies would affect society (e.g. ageing population, pressure on public health services) Research could focus on examining the feasibility of building health databases, which could accurately provide diagnosis on the basis of medical tests (e.g. blood, urine etc) Research could also focus on implications for business (e.g. business planning and market forecasting) and health systems. Research should also focus on potential legislative and regulatory issues and how to best form a policy response.
Expected impact
The research will a) increase awareness of current self diagnosis/self treatment practices; b) devise strategies for appropriate policy responses across EU; c) inform common legislation and regulation across EU; d) inform business enterprise and technical innovation in this field.
Importance for Europe
Self diagnosis/self treatment in health needs to be regulated and legislation needs to aim for ensuring safe practice. It is vital that policy response which would aim to control and regulate this industry is informed by research into foreseeable impact (e.g. healthier population) these changes may have. It is furthermore important that EU forms a coherent legislative response that could guide member states in forming their legislation.