Abstract(s)
This article explores how health innovation designers articulate care and responsibility when
designing new health technologies. Towards this end, we draw on Tronto’s ethic of care framework
and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) scholarship to analyse interviews with Canadian
health innovators (n=31). Our findings clarify how respondents: 1) direct their attention to needs
and ways to improve care; 2) mobilise their skill set to take care of problems; 3) engage in what
we call ‘care-making’ practices by prioritising key material qualities; and 4) operationalise
responsiveness to caregivers and care-receivers through user-centred design. We discuss the
inclusion of health innovation designers within the care relationship as ‘care-makers’ as well as the
tensions underlying their ways of caring and their conflicting responsibilities.