This program explores the powerful intersection between cutting-edge medical technology and the deeply human experience of illness, healing, and care. This program invites participants to look beyond data and devices, toward the values, ethics, and emotions that make health care meaningful. Through engaging presentations and real-world examples, attendees will consider how AI, wearables, and remote monitoring can serve, not overshadow, human dignity, empathy, and storytelling in medicine. With insights from literature, philosophy, and cultural traditions, the program asks: How do we ensure that innovation enhances, rather than erodes, the human connection? Participants will walk away with a deeper understanding of both the promise and the pitfalls of tech-driven health care, and why the humanities must be at the table.
Sponsored by the New Hampshire Humanities and the Friends of the Kimball Library in partnership with Atkinson Elder Services / Recreation.
Presenter, Dr. Maria Sanders is a philosophy professor and coordinates the philosophy program at Plymouth State University. She is also an attorney and founder of Philosophy 4 Life, LLC which promotes meaningful living. As an applied ethicist, Dr. Sanders’ research engages the public in scholarly philosophical dialogue within the areas of medicine, business, education, and law while encouraging thoughtful interaction with existing and emerging technologies. She has facilitated town-wide happiness quests, hosted local radio and television programs, and traveled to all fifty states in the United States, exploring how spaces become meaningful places and the essential connection between human beings, their communities, and the natural world. Her most recent book, entitled Mind the Gap: Exploring Happiness as a Community, frames happiness not simply as a personal matter but as deeply connected to systems, including social, economic, cultural, educational, and governmental structures in which people live.
For more information about the New Hampshire Humanities visit: https://www.nhhumanities.org/