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Abstract: The healthcare sector is facing challenges due to the forthcoming demographic shift in the ageing population. Technology is essential to bridge the gap in supply and demand of care, but if firms take a technology-push approach to technology development, solutions risk being unsuitable for the elderly endusers. Responsible research and innovation proposes a solution in which end-user involvement is central. In order to successfully include end-users in innovation, the users' motivation for participating should be accounted for, as motivated users appear to be beneficial for creativity and active engagement in the innovation process. This scoping literature review aims to explore previous work on the role of elderly user motivation in health-related innovation processes.
Keywords: Responsible innovation; Open innovation; User perspective; User Involvement; Older adults; User inclusion; Health technology;
1 Introduction
Over the past decades, the concern for the future of healthcare has been looming due to the ageing population (Iakovleva et al., 2019). Advances in medicine along with declining birth numbers leads to a projected demographic shift where elderly will outnumber the working population within a few decades, leading to a shortage of healthcare personnel (Liu et al., 2017). As such, the need for technology to mediate the forthcoming gap in supply and demand for healthcare is widely acknowledged, and is expected to make up a large market (European Commission, 2018). While the potential benefits of developing new technology are many, there is a risk that technology innovators take a technology-push approach, making technology that is unsuitable for the elderly end-users by not considering their needs and the context of technology use (Fischer et al., 2020).
Responsible research and innovation (RRI) has increasingly gained a standing as a guiding principle for innovation (Thapa et al., 2019, European Commission, 2014). Engaging in RRI has the purpose of ensuring that technology development aligns with the needs and expectations of various stakeholders, which in the context of healthcare often includes patients, caregivers and family members, clinicians and nurses, among others. Stilgoe et al. (2013) proposed four dimensions of RRI that need consideration:
1. Anticipation: what are the potential contingencies or repercussions of what is being developed?
2. Reflexivity: what are the assumptions and limitations of the developers?
3. Inclusion: who are the stakeholders and what are...