Old, Sick And No Health Insurance:Will You Need A Permit To Use Your Homemade Health Wearable?

摘要

We posit that as aging populations grow, so too will the demand for wearable devices that help people manage their chronic health conditions autonomously, at home, without medical supervision. Although healthcare providers are now integrating wearables into frontline services, the regulatory journey from consumer use to patient use for these devices is complex and oft protracted due to strict legislation. Through the creation of a design fiction – HealthBand - we explore how open source and crowd-funded wearables might impact future health product legislation. We argue that the generated artefacts co-construct a world in which HealthBand could plausibly exist, and in turn can help audiences engage more explicitly with the fiction’s broader debates. Further, if future health wearables are to be adopted, HCI and design researchers must not focus solely on creating prototypes but also engage with regulatory change. We assert design fictions that build worlds like HealthBand have a role in highlighting the changes required.