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Mobilizing the private sector for responsible innovation in neurotechnology

Nature Biotechnology volume 39, pages 661–664 (2021)Cite this article

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To the Editor — Emerging neurotechnologies raise important governance questions related to, for example, dual use, brain data privacy, and manipulation of personal autonomy. Although many public sector research initiatives have implemented measures to address these issues, similar systematic measures in the private sector have yet to emerge. This gap is critical, as neurotech innovation today is largely driven by a set of companies that are subject to growing public scrutiny1,2,3,4,5. Here we detail lessons, emerging practices and open questions for responsible innovation in the private sector that are the result of three years of policy deliberations that began with a 2018 conference in Shanghai convened by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and led to the release of the “OECD Recommendation on Responsible Innovation in Neurotechnology” last year6. The principles therein cover opportunities and challenges for better innovation practices in company settings—including the use of ethics advisory boards, company-level principles, and ethics-by-design approaches—with broad relevance beyond neurotech to digital medicine and corporate R&D activities in today’s era of ‘tech-lash’. We argue that it is time for a radical shift in the conversation about governance of emerging neurotech: effective governance must focus on the private sector as a central actor early on—before trajectories are locked in and scaling takes off—and requires a new set of policy perspectives and collaborative tools to do so. These tools must complement existing efforts in public-sector research ethics, post hoc product regulation and corporate social responsibility. They must also reflect the growing recognition that we cannot rely on industry self-regulation alone to steer innovation activity in socially desirable directions.

Emerging neurotechnologies, such as brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) or digital phenotyping for mental health monitoring, hold considerable promise for health and well-being, but also raise important ethical social, and governance questions (Box 1). These questions include concerns about brain data privacy, runaway human enhancement, individual autonomy, vulnerability to political or economic manipulation, direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing of devices that have variable, if any, effectiveness, dual use, do-it-yourself (DIY) neurotech and neurohacking, and new forms of inequality7,8,9,10,11. Although public-sector research has been quick to implement targeted programs to tackle these concerns—for example, the ‘Ethics and Society’ strand of the Human Brain Project12,13—the private sector has thus far paid relatively scarce systematic attention to them3.

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Acknowledgements

S.P. acknowledges support by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement 788359 (‘SCALINGS: Scaling up co-creation? Avenues and limits for including society in science and innovation’). J.I. is supported by the Canada Research Chairs Program as the Canada Research Chair in Neuroethics and co-leads the Canadian Brain Research Strategy (CIHR Grant #171583;03027 IC-127354).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCTS) and TUM School of Management, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Sebastian M. Pfotenhauer & Nina Frahm

  2. Working Party for Bio-, Nano- and Converging Technologies, Organisation For Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Paris, France

    David Winickoff

  3. Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Québec, Montréal, Canada

    David Benrimoh

  4. Aifred Health, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    David Benrimoh

  5. Neuroethics Canada, Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Judy Illes

  6. Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Global Institute for Sustainability and Innovation, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

    Gary Marchant

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  1. Sebastian M. Pfotenhauer
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  2. Nina Frahm
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  3. David Winickoff
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  4. David Benrimoh
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  5. Judy Illes
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  6. Gary Marchant
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Correspondence to Sebastian M. Pfotenhauer.

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Competing interests

S.P. serves as academic program director for the master’s program ‘Responsibility in Science, Engineering, and Technology’ (REST) at Technical University of Munich. D.W. is a senior policy analyst at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where he heads the Working Party for Biotechnology, Nanotechnology and Converging Technologies (BNCT) responsible for the Recommendation on Responsible Innovation in Neurotechnology. D.B. is a founder, shareholder and employee of Aifred Health, a digital mental health company.

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Peer review information Nature Biotechnology thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Pfotenhauer, S.M., Frahm, N., Winickoff, D. et al. Mobilizing the private sector for responsible innovation in neurotechnology. Nat Biotechnol 39, 661–664 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-021-00947-y

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