Ethics and New Health Technologies: An Innovative Scoping Review and Descriptive Analysis of the Literature

Thursday, January 5, 2023
10:40 AM - 11:30 AM
Zoom

Presenters: Sarah Ogilvie, DNP, APRN, CPHQ, and Hans-Peter DeRuiter, Ph.D., RN, School of Nursing

The exponential advancement of health technologies has led to an increasing need for awareness and critical thinking about the potential unintended consequences and ethical dilemmas that may arise from using new technologies. Unfortunately, many ethical dilemmas arise post-implementation. Few researchers preemptively consider the ethical implications of health technologies. This presentation includes an innovative descriptive analysis that located more than 24 million articles in PubMed that discussed health technologies. Of these, 0.07% (n=17,816) articles deeply considered the technology's potential ethical implications. This descriptive analysis and state of the literature is accepted for publication in the November 2022 issue of Creative Nursing.

A scoping review was also completed on this topic. An established framework for scoping reviews was used to guide the methodology. Studies published in PubMed over the last 10 years were included if they study or refer to ethics in relation to health technology as defined by established frameworks. In total, 14,532 articles were screened, 692 were retained for full-text evaluation, and 227 were included for data extraction. In total, 250 (80.9%, N=309) studies were conducted in North America and Europe; literature review studies were dominant. Most studies (52.9%, 120/227) had no direct reference to any of the 4 basic ethical principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice. In cases where studies referenced ethical theory, consequentialism dominated. When research about technology and ethics is published, the predominant focus is on its intent rather than its actual effect on patients. This lack of insight is problematic considering the vast advancement of technology in which ethics cannot keep up with understanding and offer insights on addressing ethical issues. This finding has implications for practice, research, and education. This scoping analysis was published August 15, 2022, in the Interactive Journal of Medical Research.