New Centre for Healthcare Ethics
KTH, Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University have established a joint centre for research into health and medical care ethics. At Stockholm Centre for Healthcare Ethics (CHE), KTH is responsible for medical engineering ethics.
Sven Ove Hansson, Professor of Philosophy, is responsible for the KTH involvement in the new centre. He feels that the ethics of medical engineering have previously been somewhat neglected.
“With our commitment to this new centre we wish to contribute to placing ethics at the centre of development and use of technology within the health and medical care sector.”
According to Professor Hansson there are several reasons why it is important that KTH becomes involved with issues that concern the relationship between ethics and technology – especially technology and engineering in the medical field.
“When you develop new technology it is always essential that you start from the point of view of the people who are going to use it. This is especially important when technology dealing with people’s health comes into the picture. Those working with research in which new technology for healthcare is developed need to consider ethical aspects as early as the development stage.”
Sven Ove Hansson points out that in pace with the increased complexity of equipment used in health and medical care, an increasing number of engineers educated at KTH will be working within this sector, and with direct patient contact to a considerably greater degree.
“This means that you have to bring more professional ethical aspects into engineering education,” he says.
Multidisciplinary research into priorities in healthcare, medical limits and the rights and responsibilities of individual patients will be undertaken at Stockholm Centre for Healthcare. The aim it to provide help for researchers, healthcare staff and decision makers when they are examining and analysing ethical issues.
The new centre has gathered together competence from the three universities’ ethics and philosophy departments in which KI concentrates on clinical ethics, KTH on medical engineering ethics and Stockholm University on the basic moral philosophy. High levels of scientific quality are to be combined with close links to the everyday problems experienced by people working in, or being treated by, medical services. Research will be undertaken within three primary areas: medical care priorities, medical limits and patient rights.
Håkan Soold