New ETL publication on equity in medical devices

Posted on Friday 31 January 2025

ETL has published a new paper in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Innovations “Equity in medical devices: a socio-technical approach”. It uses the example of continuous glucose monitoring devices to explore how medical devices can lead to unexpected and undesirable outcomes, highlighting an urgent need to rethink our approach to innovation and to develop processes where equity is a fundamental goal.

Here, we suggest a framework for equitable innovation that combines a process of co-design that accounts for knowledge, power and social differences among stakeholders, with considerations of technical needs alongside the institutional arrangements that mediate how devices are deployed in different social contexts.