title: Do Ethics Need to be Adapted to mHealth?
abstract: Available codes of ethics do not always adequately address questions arising from the contingent use of new technologies. In medical and health related settings, this manifests itself in the context of mHealth projects, where often, devices not specifically designed for such purposes, e.g. smartphones, tablet PCs and similar devices and gadgets are employed with the hope of benefitting both patients as well as their caretakers and furthermore researchers. Still, the highly personal nature of health and medicine as well as technical "constant companions" that are nowadays firmly woven into almost everyone's daily life, require a closer look at ethical requirements in this subject area. Therefore, in this paper, we will first present a short overview of existing codes of ethics, scrutinize their applicability for mHealth related problems and present a guideline compiled from suitable points taken from them.
authors.affiliation: Hannover Medical School, Peter L. Reichertz Institute for Medical Informatics of the Braunschweig Institute of Technology and Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: Urs-Vito
authors.initials: UV
authors.lastname: Albrecht
authors.affiliation: Institute of the History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine at Cologne University, Cologne, Germany.
authors.forename: Heiner
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Fangerau
mesh_terms: D032781:Codes of Ethics; D034201:Computers, Handheld / Q000941:ethics; D003219:Confidentiality / Q000941:ethics; D004992:Ethics, Medical; D005858:Germany; D019983:Guideline Adherence / Q000941:ethics / Q000458:organization & administration; D006297:Health Services Accessibility / Q000941:ethics / Q000458:organization & administration; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent / Q000941:ethics; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000941:ethics* / Q000458:organization & administration