Issue Ethics, social acceptance and lagging licensing rules as bottlenecks for life-science technologies

Summary

Because many of the selected technologies act directly on life and on human beings, ethical issues and social acceptance may become bottlenecks to their diffusion. KISTEP warns that if licensing, clinical guidelines and wider institutional reform fall behind the pace of technological progress, the potential of these technologies may go unrealised. The report's summary names ethical standards, social acceptance, and licensing and liability systems as core preconditions for diffusion alongside data infrastructure. These concerns sit next to data and institutional gaps as the structural reinforcements the report considers necessary before the technologies can be put to use. The authors add that their demand-oriented approach should help acceptance and policy linkage but may be less suited to spotting high-risk, highly uncertain breakthrough technologies.