| Summary: | Novel technologies for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) will impact the way
society views and deals with AD and ageing. However, such “sociocultural” impacts are
hardly acknowledged in standard approaches of technology assessment. In this paper, we
outline three steps to assess such broader impacts. First, conceptual analysis of the ideas
underlying technological developments shows how these technologies redraw the boundary
between Alzheimer's disease and normal ageing and between biological and social
approaches of ageing. Second, imaginative scenarios are designed depicting different
possible futures of AD diagnosis and societal ways to deal with ageing and the aged. Third,
such scenarios enable deliberation on the sociocultural impact of AD diagnostic
technologies among a broad set of stakeholders. An early, broad, and democratic assessment
of innovations in diagnostics of AD is a valuable addition to established forms of technology
assessment.
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