The overall aim of this PACITA project (‘Parliaments and Civil Society in Technology Assessment’) was to support policy making on public health genomics, and to create a mutual learning process between experts on the one hand, and parliamentarians and policy makers on the other hand.
The Future Panel consisted of parliamentarians from different European countries who were invited to identify major policy questions relating to the future prospects of public health genomics. This document collates the four Expert Working Group reports. On the basis of this report an Expert Paper has been produced with a focus on policy issues raised by developments in public health genomics. Finally, policy options for dealing with these issues have been described in a Policy Brief that was discussed in a Policy Hearing involving the Future Panel and a variety of experts (Lisbon, January 2014).
Public health genomics is defined as the responsible and effective translation of genome-based information and technologies for the benefit of population health. In this report the prospects for and implications of this process of translation are discussed from four different points of view. Part I discusses the state-of-the-art and future of public health genomics, part II discusses issues of quality assessment and implementation, parts III and IV discuss the economic, ethical, social and legal aspects of public health genomics.
PACITA (‘Parliaments and Civil Society in Technology Assessment’) is a four-year EU financed project under FP7 aimed at increasing the capacity and enhancing the institutional foundation for knowledge-based policy-making on issues involving science, technology and innovation, mainly based upon the diversity of practices in Parliamentary Technology Assessment (PTA). The key practices in focus are interactive in the sense that they engage science, civil society organizations, stakeholders, citizens, parliaments and/or governments directly in the activities in order to activate different kinds of knowledge, engage the actors, create common ownership to the results and enhance the communication between the societal actors.
PACITA has 15 European partners from national/regional parliamentary offices for science and technology, science academies, research institutions, universities and civil society organizations coordinated by a PTA institution, the Danish Board of Technology.
