Educating Students About Digital Health Research Ethics: Curricula Review and Expert Interview Study.

Area of Science:

• Digital Health
• Bioethics
• Research Ethics

Background:

• Digital health research, encompassing wearables, apps, and sociotechnical systems, presents complex ethical challenges.
• Existing ethics frameworks and institutional review boards partially address these concerns.
• Systematic ethics education for digital health trainees is not well understood, yet critical for responsible innovation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how college students are educated in digital health ethics.
• To analyze formal curricula and gather expert perspectives on ethics training.

Main Methods:

• Reviewed 132 syllabi from 76 academic programs at 62 universities.
• Conducted semistructured interviews with 6 leading digital health scholars.
• Coded syllabi for content and learning objectives, using affinity diagramming to identify themes.

Main Results:

• All reviewed syllabi contained ethics instructional content, with most specifying learning objectives.
• Identified 7 key themes encompassing formal instruction and practical, tacit knowledge.
• Revealed a gap between theoretical ethics instruction and actual research practices.

Conclusions:

• Digital health ethics education integrates formal coursework and practice-based training for essential skills.
• Current training supports ethical issue identification and risk anticipation but lacks consistent experiential learning.
• Recommendations include expanding early research engagement, fostering communities of practice, and integrating ethical reflection into research activities.