Introduction: New Technologies in Health Care: Opening the Black Bag

Abstract

Reading the first page of a new book, as you are now, is a bit like being confronted by a new medical technology: you’re not sure whether it will be good for you, how unpleasant (or pleasant) the experience may be, and where you might end up. This book should make you worry, but hopefully, not ill. On the other hand, a book is pretty familiar territory: you expect it to be similar to many other books you’ve read in terms of its structure and general appearance, and in the end it should have some benefit for you. An innovative health technology (IHT) is a similar mix of the strange, uncertain and perhaps forbidding, combined with a sense that you’ve seen or experienced something like it before. A diagnostic (say genetic) test, a hip replacement, an ultrasound scan, a mammogram and so on, have been available for decades yet today’s versions are qualitatively distinct from and much more extensive in range than those of the past. Perhaps most importantly, their technical sophistication generates both greater accuracy and use but also reveals new pathological uncertainties and creates new personal and professional risks. It’s not clear what the ending of the book will turn out to be, and even when you get there you can be left hanging.