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. 2021 Dec 20;28(1):1.
doi: 10.1007/s11948-021-00354-1.

Ethical, Legal and Social Issues of Digital Phenotyping as a Future Solution for Present-Day Challenges: A Scoping Review

Ana Tomičić  1 , Anamaria Malešević  2 , Anto Čartolovni  2   3
Affiliations

Ethical, Legal and Social Issues of Digital Phenotyping as a Future Solution for Present-Day Challenges: A Scoping Review

Ana Tomičić et al. Sci Eng Ethics. .

Abstract

Digital phenotyping represents an avenue of consideration in patients' self-management. This scoping review aims to explore the trends in the body of literature on ethical, legal, and social challenges relevant to the implementation of digital phenotyping technologies in healthcare. The study followed the PRISMA-ScR methodology (Tricco et al. in Ann Int Med 169(7):467-473, 2018. https://doi.org/10.7326/M18-0850 ). The review systematically identified relevant literature, characterised the discussed technology, explored its impacts and the proposed solutions to identified challenges. Overall, the literature, perhaps unsurprisingly, concentrates on technical rather than ethical, legal, and social perspectives, which limits understanding of the more complex cultural and social factors in which digital phenotyping technologies are embedded. ELS issues mostly concern privacy, security, consent, lack of regulation, and issues of adoptability, and seldom expand to more complex ethical issues. Trust was chosen as an umbrella theme of a continuum of major ELS and technical issues. Sustained critical analysis of digital phenotyping showed to be sparse and geographically exclusive. There is a continuum and overlap between ELS issues, suggesting the need for a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to each of the challenges posed by the various technologies of digital phenotyping.

Keywords: Digital health, healthcare, health policy; Digital law; Digital phenotyping; ELSI; Embedded ethics.

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Conflict of interest statement

Authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Authors' preliminary thematic scheme related to the ethical, legal, and social issues in the literature about digital phenotyping
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Source selection process from literature databases represented in a flow diagram
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Lexical field of Digital Phenotyping by disciplinary field
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Distribution of the 151 publications
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
First author's countries of affiliation
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Authors' disciplinary background—Interdisciplinary, health, and computer sciences lead in the scientific production of literature on the ELS issues of digital phenotyping
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
Word cloud of identified ethical issues
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
Word cloud of identified legal issues
Fig. 9
Fig. 9
Word cloud of identified social issues
Fig. 10
Fig. 10
Clusters of identified ELS and technical issues with sources
Fig. 11
Fig. 11
Authors' conceptual scheme representing the ethical, legal, and social issues in the literature about digital phenotyping
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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