scholarly journals Mapping the Ethical Issues of Digital Twins for Personalised Healthcare Service (Preprint)

10.2196/33081 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pei-hua Huang ◽  
Ki-hun Kim ◽  
Maartje Schermer
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Service ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Digital Twins ◽  
Personalised Healthcare

Mapping the Ethical Issues of Digital Twins for Personalised Healthcare Service (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pei-hua Huang ◽  
Ki-hun Kim ◽  
Maartje Schermer
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Digital Health ◽  
Personalised Medicine ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Ethical Values ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Digital Twins ◽  
Research Gap ◽  
Process Oriented ◽  
Personalised Healthcare

BACKGROUND The concept of digital twins has great potential for transforming the existing healthcare system by making it more personalised. As a convergence of healthcare, artificial intelligence, and information and communication technologies, personalised healthcare services developed under the concept of digital twins raise a myriad of ethical issues. While some of the ethical issues are known to researchers working on digital health and personalised medicine, currently there is no comprehensive review that maps major ethical risks of digital twins for personalised healthcare services. OBJECTIVE This paper fills the research gap by identifying major ethical risks of digital twins for personalised healthcare services. We first propose a working definition for digital twins for personalised healthcare services (DTPHS) to facilitate future discussion on the ethical issues related to these emerging digital health services. We then developed a process-oriented ethical map to identify major ethical risks against each of the different data processing phases. METHODS This research aims to address this research gap by providing a comprehensive analysis of major ethical risks of DTPHSs. Due to the scarcity of literature on DTPHSs, we are unable to perform a systematic review of ethical concerns over DTPHSs. Thus, we resort to literature on eHealth, personalised medicine, precision medicine, and information engineering to identify potential issues. We develop a process-oriented ethical map to structure the inquiry in a more systematic way. The ethical map allows us to see how each of the major ethical concerns emerges during the process of transforming raw data into valuable information. RESULTS The process-oriented ethical analysis identified ten operational problems and the relevant ethical values. By structuring the operational problems and relevant ethical values in a clear logical flow, this process-oriented ethical map allows developers of DTPHSs and stakeholders to have a comprehensive overview of major ethical risks while refining the design of DTPHSs. The ethical values section on the map also helps developers of DTPHSs better understand which values they ought to consider while developing solutions for an operational problem they encounter.   CONCLUSIONS It is challenging to address all of the major ethical risks a DTPHS might encounter proactively without a conceptual map at hand. The process-oriented ethical map we propose here can assist developers of DTPHSs in analysing ethical risks in a more systematic manner. CLINICALTRIAL N/A

Research Essay

2012 ◽  
pp. 351-354
Author(s):  
Christopher C. Hood ◽  
Sarah Bougourd
Keyword(s):  
Health Services ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Working Party ◽  
Personal Health Records ◽  
Online Health Information ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Nuffield Council ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Personalised Healthcare

Some online health information and services have the potential to mislead, confuse or create unnecessary anxiety and more should be done to help people find trustworthy health websites and use online health services safely and effectively, says a new report on the ethics of ‘personalised healthcare’ (Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2010). In September 2008, the UK Nuffield Council on Bioethics established a Working Party to consider the ethical issues raised by developments in medical profiling and online medicine that promise more ‘personalised healthcare’. The resulting report, published in October 2010, makes a number of policy and practice recommendations for providers and users of e-health services. This article highlights the recommendations made in three of the report’s e-health case studies: online health information, online personal health records, and telemedicine.

scholarly journals Digital Twins: From Personalised Medicine to Precision Public Health

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 745
Author(s):  
Maged N. Kamel Boulos ◽  
Peng Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Personalised Medicine ◽  
Physical Entity ◽  
New Era ◽  
Digital Twin ◽  
Digital Twins ◽  
Industry Sectors ◽  
New Hypothesis ◽  
Radical Transformation

A digital twin is a virtual model of a physical entity, with dynamic, bi-directional links between the physical entity and its corresponding twin in the digital domain. Digital twins are increasingly used today in different industry sectors. Applied to medicine and public health, digital twin technology can drive a much-needed radical transformation of traditional electronic health/medical records (focusing on individuals) and their aggregates (covering populations) to make them ready for a new era of precision (and accuracy) medicine and public health. Digital twins enable learning and discovering new knowledge, new hypothesis generation and testing, and in silico experiments and comparisons. They are poised to play a key role in formulating highly personalised treatments and interventions in the future. This paper provides an overview of the technology’s history and main concepts. A number of application examples of digital twins for personalised medicine, public health, and smart healthy cities are presented, followed by a brief discussion of the key technical and other challenges involved in such applications, including ethical issues that arise when digital twins are applied to model humans.

Research Essay

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher C. Hood ◽  
Sarah Bougourd
Keyword(s):  
Health Services ◽  
Health Information ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Working Party ◽  
Online Health Information ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Nuffield Council ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Personalised Healthcare ◽  
Made In

Some online health information and services have the potential to mislead, confuse or create unnecessary anxiety and more should be done to help people find trustworthy health websites and use online health services safely and effectively, says a new report on the ethics of ‘personalised healthcare’ (Nuffield Council on Bioethics, 2010). In September 2008, the UK Nuffield Council on Bioethics established a Working Party to consider the ethical issues raised by developments in medical profiling and online medicine that promise more ‘personalised healthcare’. The resulting report, published in October 2010, makes a number of policy and practice recommendations for providers and users of e-health services. This article highlights the recommendations made in three of the report’s e-health case studies: online health information, online personal health records, and telemedicine.

scholarly journals The use of digital twins in healthcare: socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugen Octav Popa ◽  
Mireille van Hilten ◽  
Elsje Oosterkamp ◽  
Marc-Jeroen Bogaardt
Keyword(s):  
Emerging Technologies ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Research Policy ◽  
Equal Treatment ◽  
Responsible Innovation ◽  
Quadruple Helix ◽  
Digital Twin ◽  
Industry Research ◽  
Digital Twins ◽  
Desk Research

AbstractAnticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation. One such emergent technology is the digital twin which we define here as a living replica of a physical system (human or non-human). A digital twin combines various emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data and robotics, each component bringing its own socio-ethical issues to the resulting artefacts. The question thus arises which of these socio-ethical themes surface in the process and how they are perceived by stakeholders in the field. In this report we present the results of a qualitative study into the socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks of using digital twins in healthcare. Employing insights from ethics of technology and the Quadruple Helix theory of innovation, we conducted desk research of white literature and 23 interviews with representatives from the four helixes: industry, research, policy and civil society. The ethical scan revealed several important areas where the digital twin can produce socio-ethical value (e.g., prevention and treatment of disease, cost reduction, patient autonomy and freedom, equal treatment) but also several important areas of socio-ethical risks (e.g., privacy and property of data, disruption of existing societal structures, inequality and injustice). We conclude with a reflection on the employed analytical tool and suggestions for further research.

Confronting the grey zone after severe brain injury

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 707-711 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Peterson ◽  
Adrian M. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Brain Injury ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Vegetative State ◽  
Clinical Care ◽  
Grey Zone ◽  
Severe Brain Injury ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Legal Decision Making ◽  
Technological Developments ◽  
The Brain

In recent years, rapid technological developments in the field of neuroimaging have provided several new methods for revealing thoughts, actions and intentions based solely on the pattern of activity that is observed in the brain. In specialized centres, these methods are now being employed routinely to assess residual cognition, detect consciousness and even communicate with some behaviorally non-responsive patients who clinically appear to be comatose or in a vegetative state. In this article, we consider some of the ethical issues raised by these developments and the profound implications they have for clinical care, diagnosis, prognosis and medical-legal decision-making after severe brain injury.

Ethical Issues in Nursing: Nutrition of Premature New-borns in Intensive Neonatal Care – Nurses between Care and Autonomy

Pflege ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-16
Author(s):  
Monika Bobbert
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Neonatal Care ◽  
Ethische Konflikte ◽  
Ethische Probleme

Pflegeethik als relativ neuer Bereich der angewandten Ethik hat unter anderem die Aufgabe, auf ethische Probleme in der pflegerischen Praxis aufmerksam zu machen und diese zu reflektieren. An einem Fallbeispiel wird gezeigt, dass das pflegerische Vorgehen bei der Ernährung von Frühgeborenen ethische Konflikte bergen kann. Am konkreten Fall werden Fragen der Patientenautonomie und Fürsorge diskutiert, die auch für andere pflegerische Situationen relevant sind. Der Artikel leistet einen Beitrag zur Klärung der spezifischen Inhalte einer auf den Handlungsbereich der professionellen Pflege bezogenen Ethik.

Research Participation Experiences of Informants of Suicide and Control Cases

Crisis ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 238-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul W. C. Wong ◽  
Wincy S. C. Chan ◽  
Philip S. L. Beh ◽  
Fiona W. S. Yau ◽  
Paul S. F. Yip ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Research Participation ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Initial Contact ◽  
Psychological Autopsy ◽  
Autopsy Study ◽  
The People ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Impact

Background: Ethical issues have been raised about using the psychological autopsy approach in the study of suicide. The impact on informants of control cases who participated in case-control psychological autopsy studies has not been investigated. Aims: (1) To investigate whether informants of suicide cases recruited by two approaches (coroners’ court and public mortuaries) respond differently to the initial contact by the research team. (2) To explore the reactions, reasons for participation, and comments of both the informants of suicide and control cases to psychological autopsy interviews. (3) To investigate the impact of the interviews on informants of suicide cases about a month after the interviews. Methods: A self-report questionnaire was used for the informants of both suicide and control cases. Telephone follow-up interviews were conducted with the informants of suicide cases. Results: The majority of the informants of suicide cases, regardless of the initial route of contact, as well as the control cases were positive about being approached to take part in the study. A minority of informants of suicide and control cases found the experience of talking about their family member to be more upsetting than expected. The telephone follow-up interviews showed that none of the informants of suicide cases reported being distressed by the psychological autopsy interviews. Limitations: The acceptance rate for our original psychological autopsy study was modest. Conclusions: The findings of this study are useful for future participants and researchers in measuring the potential benefits and risks of participating in similar sensitive research. Psychological autopsy interviews may be utilized as an active engagement approach to reach out to the people bereaved by suicide, especially in places where the postvention work is underdeveloped.

Ethical Issues Relevant to the Assessment of Suicide Risk in Nonclinical Research Settings

Crisis ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn M. Wilson ◽  
Bruce K. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Suicide Risk ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Ethical Guidelines ◽  
Schizotypal Personality ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Genetic Features ◽  
Conducting Research

Background: Our laboratory recently confronted this issue while conducting research with undergraduate students at the University of Waterloo (UW). Although our main objective was to examine cognitive and genetic features of individuals with schizotypal personality disorder (SPD), the study protocol also entailed the completion of various self-report measures to identify participants deemed at increased risk for suicide. Aims and Methods: This paper seeks to review and discuss the relevant ethical guidelines and legislation that bear upon a psychologist’s obligation to further assess and intervene when research participants reveal that they are at increased risk for suicide. Results and Conclusions: In the current paper we argue that psychologists are ethically impelled to assess and appropriately intervene in cases of suicide risk, even when such risk is revealed within a research context. We also discuss how any such obligation may potentially be modulated by the research participant’s expectations of the role of a psychologist, within such a context. Although the focus of the current paper is on the ethical obligations of psychologists, specifically those practicing within Canada, the relevance of this paper extends to all regulated health professionals conducting research in nonclinical settings.

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