Digitalisation and ethics in medicine and healthcare

When digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and robotics intersect with medicine, ethical questions inevitably arise. These cannot be easily answered solely with medical-technological, legal, or economic arguments. New areas of focus, such as the changing role of patients, the new responsibilities of doctors and caregivers, new digital possibilities in medicine, smart hospitals in clinical practice, the societal legitimacy of a potential third health data market, a future-proof educational landscape for the health and medical sector, and the limits of digital research require a critical and thematically broad engagement with ethical aspects in digital health and medicine.

This is not only important in content but also time-critical, as this sector has significant global market dynamics. eHealth, in the broadest sense, is no longer a core innovation of traditional health actors. Rather, it has become part of the daily business of major U.S. and Chinese game changers like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Alibaba, and Tencent. The responsible yet competitive participation in these developments may be the most pressing task for stakeholders in science, healthcare, health economics, and politics. Therefore, recognized experts from these fields address the often difficult questions that arise on the path to transforming into a B2B2C market in healthcare that withstands ethical scrutiny in this work.