The Ethics of Consumer Health Wearables: Convergence of Bioethics and Value Sensitive Design

Abstract

Consumer health wearables (CHWs) hold the promise to transform our lives and health outcomes exponentially. With a rapid expansion of users, the potential benefits of CHWs do not eliminate the need to consider ethical concerns surrounding their design, distribution, and adoption. Ethical implications include confusing privacy policies, the traceability of collected data, and potential harm to vulnerable populations. Despite all these concerns, regulations are sparse and ethical guidelines for the design and application of CHWs do not exist. We propose a grounded ethical framework that explores the threats of exponential utilization and growth of the CHW market to guide developers and the organizations that will use them in the ethical aspects of CHWs throughout their product life cycle. This model first uses the common bioethical principles to characterize risks and then incorporates the foundations of Value Sensitive Design as a strategy to alleviate negative impacts on users, particularly vulnerable populations and marginalized groups.