Ethics of Cybersecurity in Digital Healthcare and Well-Being of Elderly at Home

Abstract

The SHAPES Horizon 2020 project supports the well-being of the elderly at home. The growing complexity of the digital ecosystem in combination with increasing global risks involves various ethical issues associated with cybersecurity. An important dilemma is that overemphasising cybersecurity may violate fundamental values such as equality and fairness, but on the other hand, neglecting cybersecurity could undermine citizens’ trust and confidence in the digital infrastructure, policymakers and state authorities. One example of ethical issues concerning health and well-being is that if a medical implant producer protects the data transfer between implant and receiver server utilising suitable cryptology, this significantly increases the energy consumption of the implant and frequently requires more surgeries for battery exchange. The object of this work in progress paper is to help to provide necessary tools and guidelines to health and well-being service developers in the SHAPES project for their ethical consideration of cybersecurity actions. This paper examines different views and approaches to the ethics of cybersecurity in healthcare and finds the most relevant and puzzling issues for the SHAPES project. The paper investigates the ethical issues, for example, applying the approach of principlism based on four principles of biomedical ethics (respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence and justice), and ethics of care. The important aims of the employment of information and communication technology in healthcare are efficiency and quality of services, the privacy of information and confidentiality of communication, the usability of services, and safety. Four important value clusters in cybersecurity are security, privacy, fairness, and accountability. From these four different ethical aspects (biomedical ethics, ethics of care, core value clusters in cybersecurity, and technical aims), this paper proposes a new conceptual model for a system approach to analyse the ethical matters, which are related to cybersecurity in digital healthcare and well-being.