Abstract

Anticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation. One such emergent technology is the digital twin which we define here as a living replica of a physical system (human or non-human). A digital twin combines various emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data and robotics, each component bringing its own socio-ethical issues to the resulting artefacts. The question thus arises which of these socio-ethical themes surface in the process and how they are perceived by stakeholders in the field. In this report we present the results of a qualitative study into the socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks of using digital twins in healthcare. Employing insights from ethics of technology and the Quadruple Helix theory of innovation, we conducted desk research of white literature and 23 interviews with representatives from the four helixes: industry, research, policy and civil society. The ethical scan revealed several important areas where the digital twin can produce socio-ethical value (e.g., prevention and treatment of disease, cost reduction, patient autonomy and freedom, equal treatment) but also several important areas of socio-ethical risks (e.g., privacy and property of data, disruption of existing societal structures, inequality and injustice). We conclude with a reflection on the employed analytical tool and suggestions for further research.

Highlights

  • Anticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation

  • A digital twin is not a robot, (2021) 17:6 but the basic idea still is that of Descartes: it is a system that replicates in some way an individual, a part of an individual or a set of individuals

  • Our research question was: What are the most prominent socio-ethical benefits and socio-ethical risks triggered by the advent of the digital twin in healthcare and how do stakeholders perceive these benefits and risks? The question lends itself to qualitative study since we do not seek to trace the frequency or weight of values and risks but

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Summary

Introduction

Anticipating the ethical impact of emerging technologies is an essential part of responsible innovation. One such emergent technology is the digital twin which we define here as a living replica of a physical system (human or non-human). A digital twin combines various emerging technologies such as AI, Internet of Things, big data and robotics, each component bringing its own socio-ethical issues to the resulting artefacts. Interesting and controversial as such thought experiments might be, they are nothing but philosophical devices – they are sometimes called “intuition pumps” because they are devised to trigger and direct our intuition (Dennett 2013) Nowadays, such improbable twin versions of humans are approaching reality. A digital twin is [ ... ] a living model of the physical asset or system, which continually adapts to operational changes based on the collected online data and information, and can forecast the future of the corresponding physical counterpart (Liu et al 2018)

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