The physician’s oath brings a sense of the values of honesty and integrity to the medical profession’s relationship with the public. In the basic motto ‘first do no harm’ articulated as a set of first principles for medical intervention, the Hippocratic Oath as currently practiced sets a fine precedent for the kind of ‘oath’ needed for the rest of the research and professional practice community as it reaches out to engage directly with the public.
In discussion and iteration workshop with a world-leading team at a recent Ideas Salon in the Silicon Valley (led by the vision of Professor Alex jaded in his larger project on the Future of Medicine), Lizbeth Goodman put forward the idea of ‘Hippocratic Innovation’ as a framing mechanism to engage top Researchers in Technology Innovation and Education in a joint effort to demonstrate the principles of ‘first do no harm’ and to frame an explicit and fundamental set of values in the global research sector.
This workshop offers attendees at the European Challenges event an opportunity to engage with a few of the ‘first founders’ of Hippocratic Innovation, and then to offer their own models for socially committed research. It builds on the Steve Jobs/Apple prototyping idea of the ‘Next Next’: the suggestion that in planning carefully for the third generation of prototype before signing up to a current offer, we may find the most effective ways to ensure sustainability and scalability of our first principles as they become embedded in global social consciousness.
