Hello!
My name is Amy Qu, and I’m currently a senior at RISD in Industrial Design. I’m also breaking the 4th wall.
If you’re perusing this website in utter confusion, intruige, or even anger, here is a bit more explanation behind my intention for this project.
KeepSafe Technologies was conceived of mainly as a response to the US opioid epidemic. The KeepSafe is meant as a speculative product and not as a proposal, but a provocation.
My research for this project began with exploring the socially stigmatized elements of our modern American health landscape. My Miro board starts with research in this arena. If you feel so inclined, feel free to take a look at the board embedded below! Or click this link to view it on Miro.
My research centers mainly on topics of opioid use and addiction, as well as sexual health. I found these topics to be especially intriuiging because of the social stigmatization of both of these areas.
Implicit or explicit biases are essential to the formation of social stigma. We’re biased to think a certain way about people who use drugs, or have certain STI’s/STDs. It’s not necessarily because we’re all terrible people, trying to be prejudiced towards these individuals. A lot of people hold these beliefs because of how they’ve been taught to think by society.
So what happens when these biases are encoded into our technologies, systems, and products?
Implicit bias runs rampant in medicine (1, 2), resulting in inequity of healthcare provision and quality for different demographics. This is what happens when unresolved bias persists into social systems and technologies; people get hurt. The KeepSafe only allows access to its contents if users gain the approval of its algorithm. Like all machine learning applications, its been programmed with the same biases as its human creators.
Circling back to my research on the opioid crisis: Medically Assisted Treatments (3) can be essential to those in recovery from addiction. Although medications like Suboxone can literally save lives by preventing opioid withdrawal during initial stages in recovery, accessing Suboxone can be incredibly difficult. MAT is often administered on a daily basis, in the presence of nurses, in a suboxone clinic (4).
Since SAMHSA regulations make it difficult for anyone to get approved for take-home doses, you might imagine the inconvenience of having to commute to the clinic every single day for a single dose of medication (5). This can negatively affect retention rates.
Why do basic mechanisms of harm reduction often come with so many hoops to jump through before they can be accessed?
Why is it especially difficult to bypass these hoops if you’re a person seeking treatment for opioid use disorder?
What if we treated other important medical interventions (birth control, condoms, Adderall, etc.) the same way we treat interventions for people suffering opioid use disorder?
I hope you, the viewer, can think about these questions as you view the KeepSafe project. The physical and technological design elements reinforce the idea of security and safety, but for who?
Resources I looked at for this project, that I encourage you to look into if interested: 6, 7, 8. Even more linked on my Miro board!
Implicit or explicit biases are essential to the formation of social stigma. We’re biased to think a certain way about people who use drugs, or have certain STI’s/STDs. It’s not necessarily because we’re all terrible people, trying to be prejudiced towards these individuals. A lot of people hold these beliefs because of how they’ve been taught to think by society.
So what happens when these biases are encoded into our technologies, systems, and products?
Implicit bias runs rampant in medicine (1, 2), resulting in inequity of healthcare provision and quality for different demographics. This is what happens when unresolved bias persists into social systems and technologies; people get hurt. The KeepSafe only allows access to its contents if users gain the approval of its algorithm. Like all machine learning applications, its been programmed with the same biases as its human creators.
Circling back to my research on the opioid crisis: Medically Assisted Treatments (3) can be essential to those in recovery from addiction. Although medications like Suboxone can literally save lives by preventing opioid withdrawal during initial stages in recovery, accessing Suboxone can be incredibly difficult. MAT is often administered on a daily basis, in the presence of nurses, in a suboxone clinic (4).
Since SAMHSA regulations make it difficult for anyone to get approved for take-home doses, you might imagine the inconvenience of having to commute to the clinic every single day for a single dose of medication (5). This can negatively affect retention rates.
Why do basic mechanisms of harm reduction often come with so many hoops to jump through before they can be accessed?
Why is it especially difficult to bypass these hoops if you’re a person seeking treatment for opioid use disorder?
What if we treated other important medical interventions (birth control, condoms, Adderall, etc.) the same way we treat interventions for people suffering opioid use disorder?
I hope you, the viewer, can think about these questions as you view the KeepSafe project. The physical and technological design elements reinforce the idea of security and safety, but for who?
Resources I looked at for this project, that I encourage you to look into if interested: 6, 7, 8. Even more linked on my Miro board!