Technology-based interventions can significantly affect people’s lives either by directly influencing their health and well-being (e.g. via preventive medicine), or indirectly by impacting on behaviours such as physical activity, eating habits, sleep and online health information seeking. Digital innovation can be pursued both at the level of clinical applications and at the level of the general population, such as public health initiatives and mobile health (mHealth) applications. Concrete examples include the development of wearables that, combined with patient-specific data, advance personalized medicine, and solutions that can support medical experts in their daily practice (e.g. robotical surgery) and (AI-based) decision making on diagnoses and therapies.

We are witnessing new ways of how health data is generated (e.g. through sensors), monitored (at an individual and societal level), accessed, and shared between patients and health professionals, practitioners, hospitals, or in online patient-centred support groups. Possible applications also reach beyond the strict spheres of health and well-being and include various forms of human enhancement as well as the design of spaces and cities using persuasive approaches that ‘nudge’ people to live or behave healthier.

Although these evolutions can offer many opportunities for (digital) innovation, they also confront us with just as many societal challenges, for instance in terms of technology adoption, misinformation and misleading information, inclusiveness, ethical use of data, stigmatism and privacy. It calls for considering both individual aspects (e.g. respecting personal privacy) as well as societal issues (e.g. linked to the organization of mobile and telehealth programs). It also raises questions about public policy making (e.g. regarding genetic technologies), governance of digital health data, tools and platforms, as well as legal provisions, for instance about what can / may (and cannot or may not) be done with (health) data.

Digital technology is rapidly changing how we learn and are educated, both formally and informally. The opposite is also true: societal challenges, such as globalization, the diversity of student populations and a pandemic, prompt us to rethink learning and education in a blended, increasingly personal, technology-supported model no longer bound by time and location.

Flipped classrooms use digital technology to let students prepare classes at home and optimize interaction during class time. Intelligent tutors use artificial intelligence to automatically adapt teaching strategies to individual needs. Virtual reality and serious games can make education more interactive and increasingly personalized. Hackathons, design-thinking workshops, and maker spaces provide new opportunities for 21st century learning. Online teaching allows reaching learners not able to attend classes physically, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) operate at the scale of a worldwide learning community.

However, the rapid evolutions challenge us to rethink the fundaments underlying novel training (e.g. finding a consensus on the best method for surgical training) and educational programs (e.g. defining and fostering new digital literacies). Moreover, technology can also stand in the way of the learning experience: it can be a distraction for learners, the use of data-analytics raises concerns of privacy and fair use, and not everyone has equal access to technologies.

Digital media technologies and new mediatized configurations are generating distinctive changes in our social and aesthetic experiences. This raises questions such as how digital media can shape culture and how digital media is shaped by culture. Other questions relate to the development of new concepts for integrating media technologies with the physical environment.

The involvement of artists, designers and the public in the research and development of advanced digital technologies as well as in various knowledge production models have created new artistic, research and democratizing opportunities. Arts & Design Research increasingly works as a catalyst for the advancement of the cultural and creative industries. In order to take full advantage of its social innovation and economic potential, there is a need to combine arts, research and creativity with entrepreneurship and innovation.

IDS2025 wants you to explore to what extent a ‘techno/art/science’ framework proves capable in the interpretation of, and experimentation with, digital media, how it can inform current theory and how our understanding of digital media can contribute to social and cultural change in a positive way.

By providing a space for public debate, online digital media have become important tools for freedom of expression, which is indispensable for genuine democracy and civic engagement. New information and communication technologies, and the Internet in particular, provide opportunities to strengthen the participation, initiative and involvement of as well as interaction with citizens in national, regional and local public life and in decision-making processes.

The great potential of the Internet also has its downsides, including a digital divide, lack of quality control and concentration of the market. Online platforms, which facilitate interactions between Internet users, possess great technical power to control the free flow of information. This power can be misused to turn online platforms into tools for misinformation, propaganda and manipulation. Misinformation on social networks spreads significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the correct information, most of all when it concerns false political news.

Organisation and jobs are currently experiencing radical transformations induced by technological innovation. Filling the scientific gap on the exact impact of digital technologies on work and addressing the increasing number of contradicting studies about the transformations that organisations and jobs are undergoing in relation to digitalisation, is a topical and pressing issue.

In particular, there is a current lack of understanding how such technologies are embedded in different organisational settings, and with what effects on employment, skills and job quality. Yet there are also lots of unexplored territories for optimizing job content, job design as well as pursuing participative technological and organisational processes.

How can we ensure that technological applications will foster societal aims, while at the same time cradle high quality jobs and high-performance organisations?