The Ethical Challenges Of Emerging Medical Technologies

This collection of essays emphasizes society’s increasingly responsible engagement with ethical challenges in emerging medical technology. Expansion of technological capacity and attention to patient safety have long been integral to improving healthcare delivery but only relatively recently have concepts like respect, distributive justice, privacy, and autonomy gained some power to shape the development, use, and refinement of medical tools and techniques. Medical ethics goes beyond making better medicine to thinking about how to make the field of medicine better. These essays showcase several ways in which modern ethical thinking is improving safety, efficacy and efficiency of medical technology, increasing access to medical care, and empowering patients to choose care that comports with their desires and beliefs. Included are complimentary ethical approaches as well as compelling counter-arguments. Together, the articles demonstrate how improving the quality of medical technology relies on every stakeholder -- not just medical researchers and scientists -- to assess each given technology’s strengths and pitfalls. This collection also portends one of the next major issues in the ethics of medical technology: developing the requisite moral framework to accompany shifts toward patient-centred personalized healthcare.

As advances in disruptive technologies transform politics and increase the velocity of information and policy flows worldwide, the public is being confronted with changes that move faster than they can comprehend. There is an urgent need to analyze and communicate the ethical issues of these advancements. In a perpetually updating digital world, data is becoming the dominant basis for reality. This new world demands a new approach because traditional methods are not fit for a non-physical space like the internet. Applied Ethics in a Digital World provides an analysis of the ethical questions raised by modern science, technological advancements, and the fourth industrial revolution and explores how to harness the speed, accuracy, and power of emerging technologies in policy research and public engagement to help leaders, policymakers, and the public understand the impact that these technologies will have on economies, legal and political systems, and the way of life. Covering topics such as artificial intelligence (AI) ethics, digital equity, and translational ethics, this book is a dynamic resource for policymakers, civil society, CEOs, ethicists, technologists, security advisors, sociologists, cyber behavior specialists, criminologists, data scientists, global governments, students, researchers, professors, academicians, and professionals.

On February 26, 2020, the Board on Health Sciences Policy of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hosted a 1-day public workshop in Washington, DC, to examine current and emerging bioethical issues that might arise in the context of biomedical research and to consider research topics in bioethics that could benefit from further attention. The scope of bioethical issues in research is broad, but this workshop focused on issues related to the development and use of digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and machine learning in research and clinical practice; issues emerging as nontraditional approaches to health research become more widespread; the role of bioethics in addressing racial and structural inequalities in health; and enhancing the capacity and diversity of the bioethics workforce. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

This book provides a wide and deep perspective on the ethical issues raised by pervasive information and communication technology (PICT) – small, powerful, and often inexpensive Internet-connected computing devices and systems. It describes complex and unfamiliar technologies and their implications, including the transformative potential of augmented reality, the power of location-linked information, and the uses of “big data,” and explains potential threats, including privacy invaded, security violated, and independence compromised, often through widespread and lucrative manipulation. PICT is changing how we live, providing entertainment, useful tools, and life-saving systems. But the very smartphones that connect us to each other and to unlimited knowledge also provide a stream of data to systems that can be used for targeted advertising or police surveillance. Paradoxically, PICT expands our personal horizons while weaving a web that may ensnare whole communities. Chapters describe particular cases of PICT gone wrong, but also highlight its general utility. Every chapter includes ethical analysis and guidance, both specific and general. Topics are as focused as the Stuxnet worm and as broad as the innumerable ways new technologies are transforming medical care. Written for a broad audience and suitable for classes in emerging technologies, the book is an example of anticipatory ethics – “ethical analysis aimed at influencing the development of new technologies” (Deborah Johnson 2010). The growth of PICT is outpacing the development of regulations and laws to protect individuals, organizations, and nations from unintended harm and malicious havoc. This book alerts users to some of the hazards of PICT; encourages designers, developers, and merchants of PICT to take seriously their ethical responsibilities – if only to “do no harm” – before their products go public; and introduces citizens and policy makers to challenges and opportunities that must not be ignored.

This thought-provoking study examines the ethical, legal, and social problems that arise with cutting-edge medical technology. Using as examples four powerful and largely unregulated technologies—off-label use of drugs, innovative surgery, assisted reproduction, and neuroimaging—Margaret L. Eaton and Donald Kennedy illustrate the difficult challenges faced by clinicians, researchers, and policy makers who seek to advance the frontiers of medicine safely and responsibly. Supported by medical history and case studies and drawing on reports from dozens of experts, the authors address important practical, ethical, and policy issues. They consider topics such as the responsible introduction of new medical products and services, the importance of patient consent, the extent of the duty to mitigate harm, and the responsibility to facilitate access to new medical therapies. This work's insights into the nature and consequences of medical innovation contribute to the national debate on how best to protect patients while fostering innovation and securing benefits.

Improving quality of life is one of the main advantages of integrating new innovations into medicine. New technologies are revolutionizing medicine and opening new opportunities for patients, doctors, clinics, and companies. The patient's well-being is monitored autonomously by smartphones, digital medical records simplify everyday clinical work, virtual reality is used for treatment, and robots help in the operating room. The new technological possibilities in healthcare not only change patients’ lives, but also the work of doctors, clinics, and companies. In the fields of healthcare and medicine, new technologies can be used for patient communication, health monitoring, or for the treatment of patients, and modern research is devoted to advancing and understanding these technologies. Ethical Implications of Reshaping Healthcare With Emerging Technologies includes the most up-to-date research in the fields of healthcare and medicine worldwide, provides answers to the forms of treatment that are already possible in medicine, and illuminates the future possibilities that are already being researched. In addition, today's knowledge is translated and shown in how new technologies such as autonomous VR-system can be used for pain reduction as part of a treatment. Finally, this book examines the ethical guidelines in healthcare and medicine that are associated with the rapid development of these technologies. This book will be useful for the healthcare industry, hospital administration, the health insurance industry, doctors, healthcare workers, business professionals, IT specialists, medical software designers, scientists, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students looking for the latest information on the use of emerging technologies in healthcare settings.

Recent social developments, such as demographic change, skill shortages and new medical technologies, have necessitated a transition in the traditional roles of health-care professions. New forms of division of labour and inter-professional health-care education are emerging while at the same time ethical challenges, such as corruption and conflicts of interest, have to be mastered. This book addresses historical, conceptual and empirical aspects of professionalism and inter-professionalism in health care from an international and interdisciplinary perspective. The work is divided into five sections: historical and societal aspects of health care professions; learning and teaching medical professionalism; transformation of health care professions; professional leadership and team decision-making in health care; and ethical challenges to health care professionalism. The final chapter integrates the main ideas and perspectives on health-care professionalism which have been developed throughout the book and highlights how the work in the diverse disciplines is interrelated. The book will be a valuable reference for the many researchers and students with an interest in medical ethics, professionalism and comparative systems of healthcare.