Question

Consider a future health care need, such as medical issues from lack of gravity or deep-sea pressures. Are the current health care policies and laws able to provide access at a competitive cost and high quality? Provide an example in support of your answer.

Answer 1

Ans) Current health care policies and laws able to provide access at a competitive cost and high quality:

(a) Protection and promotion of global values:

- United Nations engagement with new
technologies and the policy issues they raise will be anchored in the values and obligations
defined by the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights23 and through the realization of the SDGs. At the heart of these standards are
values such as equality and equity. These should be the guiding principles in every action
undertaken with regard to new technologies.

(b) Fostering of inclusion and transparency:

- Our engagement must ensure that the
United Nations remains a trusted venue within which Governments, industry, academia
and civil society, among others, can come together to make collective choices regarding
new technologies openly, transparently and based on shared values. There must be a greater openness to new ideas and new voices, which challenge institutional business-as-usual
reflexes and allow the United Nations to engage credibly with partners. This will include a
significant role for youth, who have a unique interest in these choices, building on the work
of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth.

(c) Working in partnership:

- Effective engagement on new technologies clearly requires close partnership with a range of government, industry, academic and civil society partners.
This is especially true, as the private sector is driving much of the progress on development
of those technologies.

(d) Building on existing capabilities and mandates: Engagement with new technologies
should be viewed as a necessary component of successful mandate implementation – not as
a new mandate. For this to be achieved, the significant efforts currently under way across
the system must be added to and reinforced, alongside ongoing reform efforts.

(e) Practising humility and engagement in continuous learning:

- For many in industry, some in civil society and some Governments, the United Nations is not an obvious interlocutor within the context of emerging technologies. As our collective engagement is broadened and, indeed, even as all actors are being reminded of their shared commitments and obligations, we must be prepared to acknowledge what we do not know in this complex field. We must learn to incentivize an innovative culture in which both successes and failures arising from exposure to new technologies are a source of understanding and a guide to our contribution to policy dialogues. With this goal in mind, we will constantly adjust our actions as we go about learning how we can best engage with technology in support of Member States’ technological transformations.