Prof. Dr. An Jacobs

An Jacobs, Ph.D., is a sociologist and Professor working at SMIT since 2005 on the digital transformation of healthcare and work, with a socio-technical and human-centred focus on AI, robotics, and responsible innovation. She teaches in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), interpretative research methods, ‘users and innovation in digital media’, and the module ‘AI, people and culture’ in the postgraduate organised at FARI. Within SMIT, she is unit lead of the unit EDDI (Ethics coDesign in Digital Innovation) in charge of the subteam working on “Digital Health and Work” in close cooperation with imec.

Her research examines how digital and AI-driven technologies reshape everyday practices and social responsibilities for patients, citizens, health professionals, and workers—and how potential impacts can be anticipated and assessed before implementation. She uses participatory methods and co-design with diverse end-user groups to support interdisciplinary development and to help ensure technologies are inclusive, usable, and aligned with real-world contexts.

A core line of her current work examines women’s health communication and support in the digital and AI era, with particular attention to (peri)menopause, including how platforms and apps can both empower and stigmatise, and how technologies can better connect symptoms, recognition, and care pathways.
 

In parallel, she studies why digital health innovations often fail in real-world settings despite promising technology, drawing on local and European projects in self-management at home, cross-stakeholder coordination (e.g., GPs and pharmacists), and digital tools in hospitals (including the OR), nursing homes, and home care. She focuses on digital self-management tools (apps, wearables), ePROMS and remote monitoring, and their effects on clinical workflows, workload, “data overload”, and patient autonomy. 

Another key strand addresses responsible AI in practice: explainability for end users, meaningful human oversight embedded in workflows, and bias awareness and mitigation—linked to broader work at SMIT on privacy literacy, ethics, trust, and governance. Finally, as a founding partner of BruBotics (VUB), she studies human–robot interaction in healthcare and manufacturing, including the evolution of robotics and exoskeletons and their impact on safety, collaboration, autonomy, dignity, and organisational culture.