Developing technology means making choices: about what matters and who will be using it. According to Karin Jongsma, these choices should not solely be evaluated after the fact, when a technology is fully developed, but instead during the early phases of technology development. On February 15, 2026, she was appointed Professor of Ethics of Medical Biotechnology at the Julius Center of UMC Utrecht. In her research, she explores how ethical reflection and technological innovation can go hand in hand from the earliest stages.
“It is both a great honor and a great responsibility. For me, it is important that I can be meaningful for the people I work with, for society, and for science. I will also continue doing what I have always done: conducting research with inspiring colleagues and building bridges between science and society. You may say that this appointment changes everything and nothing at the same time. A new role comes with new responsibilities: as a professor, you are responsible for supervising PhD candidates, representing your academic field, and writing recommendation letters for prizes or grants. These are responsibilities I genuinely look forward to, because in that way I can help colleagues further their careers and help make science a nicer place to work.”
“Somewhat indirectly. I studied health sciences and did a research master’s in health policy. During my studies I often missed ‘something’ in discussions about medical interventions. When evidence was found that a medical intervention worked, I kept wondering how we could truly determine whether an intervention was good, better than alternatives, and whether we should want it at all. I started conducting ethics research at the Centre for Ethics and Health, and after that I pursued a PhD in medical ethics. Since then, I have never really left the field. Bioethics also suits my curiosity, because fellow ethicists tend to have a broad interest and are constantly reading, learning, and reflecting.”
“With my group, we study a range of technologies, from stem cell technology to neurotechnology and digital applications such as artificial intelligence (AI). My main interest is in what people need to know, do, and take responsibility for when they work with these technologies. With AI, for example, this involves skills to judge when such a system makes a mistake. Humans need to deal with the consequences when a system fails and help prevent such errors from occurring in the first place. The same applies to neurotechnology, such as brain implants. What does such an implant mean for the people who use it? What do they need to use the technology meaningfully, and what does it ask of them? Those are the kinds of questions that take center stage in my research.”
“One current project focuses on the ethics of human-AI collaboration. In medical literature, this type of collaboration is often presented as the most promising way to realize the benefits of AI in clinical practice. At the same time, it raises many questions. Research on collaboration between humans indicates many different forms of collaboration, such as collaboration with an assistant or with a fellow scientist, offering different advantages. Moreover, we know that collaboration can fail; this means that there are conditions for these advantages to emerge. In this project, we therefore aim to clarify what is actually meant by human-AI collaboration, whether it can indeed generate benefits, and under what conditions. This is not only an analytical puzzle; it also helps determine who should collaborate with which types of AI systems and in what ways.”
“Our main approach is called ethical parallel research. This means that ethical analysis should be done from the early phases on, and not only when a technology is already fully developed. We aim to be involved early on, because it has the benefit that the technology can still be steered and adapted. In the early phases of technological development, many decisions are made that may appear purely technical but actually determine who may use the technology and what that user will need. Rather than evaluating technologies after the fact, we are having such ethical reflections from the start.”
“Yes, so not thinking about researchers and patients, but rather with them. Together, we try to explore how technology can be designed and implemented in the best possible way. In these early stages of development, researchers have several assumptions, for example they believe they already know what patients want. But once we speak with patients, we often discover many more nuances. For example, in our research on brain implants, many patients said that the aesthetics of the technology, e.g. how visible it is, is very important to them. Researchers themselves were less aware of these aspects. Nevertheless, it has consequences for the design of the technology, such as how wiring is arranged or how large a battery needs to be. These conversations illustrate how ethicists can help connect different groups of researchers, healthcare professionals, and patients. That is one of the most beautiful aspects of this work.”
“Technology is indeed advancing rapidly, but ethical research focuses on questions that remain relevant regardless of what technology looks like, such as autonomy, justice, and responsibility. That makes ethical research quite timeless, even if new technologies can shed new light on these concepts. For example, digital technologies and AI raise new questions about how we generate knowledge and what we consider reliable knowledge. If an AI system arrives at a particular medical diagnosis, what should we do with that? Should we verify it? Can we rely on it completely? And what happens when mistakes occur, either by the AI system itself or by a clinician using AI? These questions are directly relevant for the foundations of medical knowledge.”
“I hope that in the coming years we can conduct even more of this kind of research and integrate ethics even stronger into both medical practice and medical education. In my teaching, I aim to encourage students and researchers to think critically about their own assumptions and ideas about the world. Not because everyone should become an ethicist, but because that critical attitude stimulates curiosity. And curiosity, in my view, is one of the most important qualities of a good scientist and physician. When in a lecture or conversation someone suddenly thinks, ‘Wait a moment, this is interesting,’ that is fantastic. Those are the moments when I especially realize that ethics can truly enrich both science and healthcare.”
Photo: Fabian Landewee
Karin Jongsma will deliver her inaugural lecture on February 11, 2027.
