Background

Advances in predictive health technologies, including biomarkers, genetic testing, wearable devices, and AI-based risk models, increasingly enable the identification of disease risks long before clinical onset. This development is highly relevant for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), where predictive approaches are rapidly expanding. At the same time, predictive health information is becoming accessible beyond clinical settings through digital applications and everyday technologies. Young people are growing up in this environment, yet little is known about how they understand, interpret, and evaluate individual knowledge about their own potential future illness.

Methods

PRiTech is an interdisciplinary, participatory research project involving students from different school types and age groups. Using qualitative methods such as focus groups, co-design workshops, body-mapping, and scenario-based reflection, adolescents are actively engaged in structured discourse on predictive health technologies. Interdisciplinary experts from medicine (i.e. neurology), ethics, law, AI, and education contribute scientific input throughout the process. Insights gained inform the iterative co-development of educational materials will be tested, evaluated, and integrated in school settings.

Results
PRiTech (‘Prediction of Health Risks: Discourse on Technologies for Future Knowledge’) aims to investigate how adolescents perceive and engage with predictive health technologies and individual health information. A central objective is to develop age-appropriate, ethically grounded educational materials to strengthen adolescents’ competence in understanding and meaningfully contextualizing such information, including its personal and social implications.

Conclusions

By systematically integrating adolescents’ perspectives, PRiTech addresses a critical gap in the responsible implementation of predictive health technologies. The project contributes to forward-thinking ethical engagement with AD risk prediction and related fields, fostering long-term individual and societal preparedness. The participatory framework and resulting materials are designed to be transferable to other contexts of predictive medicine and public health education.