Steering Vaccinomics Innovations with Anticipatory Governance and Participatory Foresight

Abstract

Vaccinomics is the convergence of vaccinology and population-based omics sciences. The success of knowledge-based innovations such as vaccinomics is not only contingent on access to new biotechnologies. It also requires new ways of governance of science, knowledge production, and management. This article presents a conceptual analysis of the anticipatory and adaptive approaches that are crucial for the responsible design and sustainable transition of vaccinomics to public health practice. Anticipatory governance is a new approach to manage the uncertainties embedded on an innovation trajectory with participatory foresight, in order to devise governance instruments for collective "steering" of science and technology. As a contrast to hitherto narrowly framed "downstream impact assessments" for emerging technologies, anticipatory governance adopts a broader and interventionist approach that recognizes the social construction of technology design and innovation. It includes in its process explicit mechanisms to understand the factors upstream to the innovation trajectory such as deliberation and cocultivation of the aims, motives, funding, design, and direction of science and technology, both by experts and publics. This upstream shift from a consumer "product uptake" focus to "participatory technology design" on the innovation trajectory is an appropriately radical and necessary departure in the field of technology assessment, especially given that considerable public funds are dedicated to innovations. Recent examples of demands by research funding agencies to anticipate the broad impacts of proposed research--at a very upstream stage at the time of research funding application--suggest that anticipatory governance with foresight may be one way how postgenomics scientific practice might transform in the future toward responsible innovation. Moreover, the present context of knowledge production in vaccinomics is such that policy making for vaccines of the 21st century is occurring in the face of uncertainties where the "facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent and where no single one of these dimensions can be managed in isolation from the rest." This article concludes, however, that uncertainty is not an accident of the scientific method, but its very substance. Anticipatory governance with participatory foresight offers a mechanism to respond to such inherent sociotechnical uncertainties in the emerging field of vaccinomics by making the coproduction of scientific knowledge by technology and the social systems explicit. Ultimately, this serves to integrate scientific and social knowledge thereby steering innovations to coproduce results and outputs that are socially robust and context sensitive.

Power to the people: a wiki-governance model for biobanks

“…Third, wiki-governance would facilitate a continuous feedback loop. As underlying science (for example, next-generation DNA sequencing) and technology (for example, cloud computing) advances and new ethical and legal issues arise (for example, return of research results and incidental findings), perpetual public dialogue would provide desired flexibility, adaptability and reflexivity, thereby consistently challenging existing governance policies and procedures and anticipating which challenges might arise [11,47]. …”

Exploring Responsible Innovation as a Guiding Concept: The Case of Neuroimaging in Justice and Security

“…Also, most of the responsible innovation literature starts from the plausible premise that innovations are radically uncertain and that their societal and environmental consequences are virtually unpredictable (for an example, see Ozdemir et al 2011). The question then is what responsibility could mean if this premise were indeed true.…”

Designing a post-genomics knowledge ecosystem to translate pharmacogenomics into public health action

“…[24]). Yet, while there are limits to the extent to which non-experts and non-professionals may contribute to scientific inquiry, it is clear that their role is not relegated to the traditional passive one where they are simply asked to adopt and accept the innovations produced single-handedly by experts [31]. …”

“…Third, complex collaboration is needed when knowledge crosses organizational, disciplinary or national boundaries, and when actors have differences in research practices and methods, ontologies, human values and epistemologies [10,11,13]. Fourth, there is an increasing recognition that knowledge-based post-genomics innovations demand cultivation of ongoing, iterative and mutual learning among the innovation actors so as to enable dynamic and sustainable collective innovation [31]. …”