Digital health technologies: Compounding the existing ethical challenges of the 'right' not to know.

Abstract

Doctors hold a prima facie duty to respect the autonomy of their patients. This manifests as the patient's 'right' not to know when patients wish to remain unaware of medical information regarding their health, and poses ethical challenges for good medical practice. This paper explores how the emergence of digital health technologies might impact upon the patient's 'right' not to know. The capabilities of digital health technologies are surveyed and ethical implications of their effects on the 'right' not to know are explored. Digital health technologies are increasingly collecting, processing and presenting medical data as clinically useful information, which simultaneously presents large opportunities for improved health outcomes while compounding the existing ethical challenges generated by the patient's 'right' not to know. These digital tools should be designed to include functionality that mitigates these ethical challenges, and allows the preservation of their user's autonomy with regard to the medical information they wish to learn and not learn about.