TY - JOUR
T1 - An Ethical Framework for the Design, Development, Implementation, and Assessment of Drones Used in Public Healthcare
AU - Cawthorne, Dylan
AU - Robbins-van Wynsberghe, Aimee
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - The use of drones in public healthcare is suggested as a means to improve efficiency under constrained resources and personnel. This paper begins by framing drones in healthcare as a social experiment where ethical guidelines are needed to protect those impacted while fully realizing the benefits the technology offers. Then we propose an ethical framework to facilitate the design, development, implementation, and assessment of drones used in public healthcare. Given the healthcare context, we structure the framework according to the four bioethics principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice, plus a fifth principle from artificial intelligence ethics: explicability. These principles are abstract which makes operationalization a challenge; therefore, we suggest an approach of translation according to a values hierarchy whereby the top-level ethical principles are translated into relevant human values within the domain. The resulting framework is an applied ethics tool that facilitates awareness of relevant ethical issues during the design, development, implementation, and assessment of drones in public healthcare.
AB - The use of drones in public healthcare is suggested as a means to improve efficiency under constrained resources and personnel. This paper begins by framing drones in healthcare as a social experiment where ethical guidelines are needed to protect those impacted while fully realizing the benefits the technology offers. Then we propose an ethical framework to facilitate the design, development, implementation, and assessment of drones used in public healthcare. Given the healthcare context, we structure the framework according to the four bioethics principles: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice, plus a fifth principle from artificial intelligence ethics: explicability. These principles are abstract which makes operationalization a challenge; therefore, we suggest an approach of translation according to a values hierarchy whereby the top-level ethical principles are translated into relevant human values within the domain. The resulting framework is an applied ethics tool that facilitates awareness of relevant ethical issues during the design, development, implementation, and assessment of drones in public healthcare.
KW - Applied ethics
KW - Drones
KW - Public healthcare
KW - Robot ethics
KW - Value-sensitive design (VSD)
KW - Values hierarchy
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85086792326&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11948-020-00233-1
DO - 10.1007/s11948-020-00233-1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85086792326
SN - 1353-3452
VL - 26
SP - 2867
EP - 2891
JO - Science and Engineering Ethics
JF - Science and Engineering Ethics
IS - 5
ER -