Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Ethical Issues in Digital Health

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Requirements Engineering for Digital Health

Abstract

With advancement in technology and breakthrough in Internet connectivity, digital health technologies have penetrated all aspects of our lives. Hospital information systems (HIS), electronic health records (EHR), ePrescriptions, eReferrals, personal digital assistant (PDA), wearable devices, telemedicine and telemonitoring are some of the growing number of digital health technologies that help to facilitate the storage, transmission and retrieval of medical data; improve communication between patients and healthcare professionals; monitor biological and physiological parameters, and provide remote health and social care services. However, technology-centred health and social care services also raise a number questions involving what sort of ethical conduct should be expected by developers of the digital health technologies. Issues such as privacy, security, equality, accessibility and data protection are some ethical concerns posed by new technologies in the health and social care sector. One challenge for those involved in the design, development and deployment of digital health technologies and applications will be to determine what constitutes ethics and what codes of ethics to adhere to. There are many frameworks and guidelines established to deal with the impact of digital technologies on our societies. Requirement engineers need to adhere to the relevant codes of ethics to address important engineering ethics-related software requirements.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 89.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. FI-STAR (2013) Future internet social technological alignment in healthcare. https://www.fi-star.eu/home.html. Accessed on 15 June, 2014

  2. Sonnier P (2014) Story of digital health. http://storyofdigitalhealth.com/. Accessed on June 1, 2014

  3. Rechel B, Doyle Y, Grundy E, McKee M (2009) How can health systems respond to population ageing? Policy brief 10. World Health Organisation. http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/64966/E92560.pdf. Accessed on June 14, 2014

  4. World Health Organisation (2005) Preventing chronic disease: a vital investment. http://www.who.int/chp/chronic_disease_report/contents/foreword.pdf?ua=1. Accessed on June 14, 2014

  5. World Health Organisation (2011) Global health and aging. http://www.nia.nih.gov/sites/default/files/global_health_and_aging.pdf. Accessed on June 14, 2014

  6. Boyd CM, Fortin M (2010) Future of multimorbidity research: how should understanding of multimorbidity inform health system design? Public Health Reviews 2010(32):451–74

    Google Scholar 

  7. Mercer SW, Smith SM, Wyke S, O’Dowd T, Watta GCM (2009) Multimorbidity in primary care: developing the research agenda. Family Practice 16(2):79–80. doi:10.1093/fampra/cmp020

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Ambient Assisted Living (2014) Care for the future: an ageing society faces an increasing need for care, how will ICT contribute to sustainable solutions? Active and Assisted Living Programme. Challenge-led call for proposal 2014. http://www.aal-europe.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/AAL-2014-call-text-20140526.pdf. Accessed on June 14, 2014

  9. Stone RI, Wiener JM (2001) Who will care for us? Addressing the long-term care workforce crisis. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. http://aspe.hhs.gov/daltcp/reports/ltcwf.htm. Accessed on June 14, 2014

  10. Weiner JP (2012) Doctor-patient communication in the e-health era. Israel Journal of Health Policy Research 1:33. doi:10.1186/2045-4015-1-33

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Reidl C, Wagner I, Rauhala M (2005) Examining ethical issues of IT in health care. Action for health. Institute of Technology Assessment & Design. Vienna University of Technology. http://www.sfu.ca/act4hlth/pub/working/Ethical-Issues.pdf. Accessed on June 6, 2014

  12. Madhavan S, Sanders AE, Chou W-YS, Shuster A, Boone KW, Dente MA, Shad AT, Hesse BW (2011) Paediatric palliative care and eHealth: opportunities for patient-centred care. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 40(5 Suppl 2):S208–S216. doi:10.1016/j.amepre. 2011.01.013

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Cushing CC, Steele RG (2010) A meta-analytic review of eHealth interventions for paediatric health promotion and maintaining behaviours. Journal of Paediatric Psychology 35(9): 937–949

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Pew Research Centre (2012) Health fact sheet. Pew research internet project. http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/health-fact-sheet/. Accessed on June 6, 2014

  15. Dedding C, van Doorn R, Winkler L, Reis R (2011) How will e-health affect patient participation in the clinic? A review of e-health studies and the current evidence for changes in the relationship between medical professionals and patients. Social Science & Medicine 72(1): 49–53

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Resnik DB (2011) What is ethics in research and why is it important? http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/whatis/. Accessed on June 14, 2014

  17. Dyer KA (2001) Ethical challenges of medicine and health on the Internet: a review. Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) 3(2):e23. doi:10.2196/jmir.3.2.e23

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  18. Maddox P (November 21, 2002). Ethics column: ethics and the brave new world of e-health. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing 8(1): 6. www.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/Columns/Ethics/Ethicsandehealth.aspx. Accessed on June 3, 2014

  19. Oliver A, Mossialos E (2004) Equality of access to health care: outlining the foundations for action. Journal of Epidemiology Community Health 58:655–658. doi:10.1136/jech. 2003.017731

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Townsend A, Adam P, Li LC, McDonald M, Backman CL (2013) Exploring eHealth ethics and multi-morbidity: protocol for an interview and focus group of patients and health care provider views and experiences of using digital media for health purposes. Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) Research Protocol 2(2):e38

    Google Scholar 

  21. Alpay LL, Henkemans OB, Ottens W, Rövekamp TAJM, Dumay ACM (2010) E-health applications and services for patient empowerment: directions for best practices in the Netherlands. Telemedicine and e-Health 16(7):787–791

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. United Kingdom Alzheimer’s Society (2014) Position statement on safer walking technology. http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=579. Accessed on June 1, 2014

  23. Health on the Net Foundation, HoNCode (2013) The commitment to reliable health and medical information on the internet. http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Webmasters/Visitor/visitor.html. Accessed on June 2, 2014

  24. World Health Organisation, WHO (2013) eHealth and health internet domain names. World Health Organisation Sixth-Sixth World Health Assembly, A66/26, Provision agenda item 17.5, 14 May 2013. http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA66/A66_26-en.pdf?ua=1. Accessed on June 2, 2014

  25. Kluge E-HW (2000) Professional codes for electronic HC record protection: ethical, legal and economic and structural issues. International Journal of Medical Informatics 60:85–96. doi:10.1016/S1386-5056(00)00107-6

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Beauchamp TL, Childress JF (2001) Principles of biomedical ethics, 5th edn. Oxford University Press, New York, NY

    Google Scholar 

  27. Kluge E-HW (1998) Fostering a security culture: a model code of ethics for health information professionals. International Journal of Medical Informatics 49:105–110

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. World Medical Association, WMA (2002) WMA declaration on ethical considerations regarding health databases. The 53rd WMA General Assembly, Washington, DC, USA, October 2002. http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/d1/index.html. Accessed on June 2, 2014

  29. European Commission (2002) Directive 2002/58/EC of the European parliament and of the council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (Directive on privacy and electronic communications). http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32002L0058&from=EN. Accessed on June 6, 2014

  30. Internet Healthcare Coalition (2000) eHealth code of ethics. http://www.ihealthcoalition.org/ehealth-code-of-ethics/. Accessed on June 4, 2014

  31. The Information Standard (2012) The information standard: frequently asked questions. http://www.theinformationstandard.org/about/faq?page=2&theme=highcontrast. Accessed on June 2, 2014

  32. DISCERN (1999) DISCERN on the internet. http://www.discern.org.uk/hoti.php. Accessed on June 2, 2014

  33. Khresmoi (2010) Khresmoi medical information analysis and retrieval. http://www.khresmoi.eu/. Accessed on June 2, 2014

  34. Medline Plus (2012) MedlinePlus guide to healthy web surfing. U.S. National Library of Medicine and National Institute of Health. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/healthywebsurfing.html. Accessed on June 2, 2014

  35. Wadhwa K, Wright D (2013) eHealth: frameworks for assessing ethical impacts. In: George C, Whitehouse D, Duquenoy P (eds) eHealth: legal, ethical and governance challenges. Springer, Berlin, pp 183–210

    Google Scholar 

  36. DISCERN Genetics (2005) Background: the DISCERN genetics tool. http://www.discern-genetics.org/quality_criteria_and_references.php. Accessed on June 2, 2014

  37. Raghupathi W (1997) Health care information systems. Communications of the ACM 40(8):81–82

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Food Ethics Council, United Kingdom (2013) Ethical matrix. http://www.foodethicscouncil.org/system/files/Ethical%20Matrix_1.pdf. Accessed on May 3, 2014

  39. Merikangas KR, et al (2011) Prevalence and correlates of biopolar spectrum disorder in the World Mental Health Survey Initiative. Archives of General Psychiatry 68(3):241–251. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.12

  40. Lim Jumelle AK, Ispas I, Thuemmler C, Mival O, Kosta E, Casla P, Ruiz de Azúa S, González-Pinto A (2014) Ethical assessment in E-health. In: Proceedings of the IEEE HealthCom, Natal, 2014 (© IEEE 2014)

    Google Scholar 

  41. Association of Computing Machinery (2014) Software engineer code of ethics and professional practice. http://www.acm.org/about/se-code#full. Accessed on June 15, 2014

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Informatics & Digital Innovation, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK

    Ai Keow Lim Jumelle

  2. Ministry of National Education, Bucharest, Romania

    Ioana Ispas

Authors
  1. Ai Keow Lim Jumelle
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ioana Ispas
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ai Keow Lim Jumelle .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden

    Samuel A. Fricker

  2. Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Christoph Thümmler

  3. Eurescom GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany

    Anastasius Gavras

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Jumelle, A.K.L., Ispas, I. (2015). Ethical Issues in Digital Health. In: Fricker, S., Thümmler, C., Gavras, A. (eds) Requirements Engineering for Digital Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09798-5_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09798-5_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09797-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09798-5

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation