Identifying and Ranking Ethical Issues of the Internet of Things in Medical Sciences using Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to billions of physical devices around the world that are now connected to the internet, all collecting and sharing data. The IoT has been widely applied to interconnect available medical resources and provide reliable, effective and smart healthcare service to the people. The social acceptance of IoT applications and services strongly deepens on the trustworthiness of information and the protection of private data. The marked expansion of the IoT specific technologies has presented daunting ethical challenges. Therefore, the present study aimed to identify the ethical issues of IoT in medical sciences in Iran.

The current study was conducted in two phases using the mixed-method approach in winter 2020. In the first phase, the ethical issues of the IoT were identified by library search and assessed by the content analysis. In the second phase, ethical issues were ranked by a panel of experts, including 15 IT experts who worked in medical universities in Iran. The Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) method was used for ranking the ethical issues of IoT.

The obtained results revealed the importance of informed consent (0.259), privacy (0.227), information security (0.195), trust (0.171), and physical safety (0.148) in ethical issues of IoT.

As evidenced by the obtained results, informed consent and privacy were the most important ethical issues in IoT. Moreover, IoT devices that target or profile peopleschr('39') information without their knowledge or consent could be interpreted as infringing upon their privacy. The users of these devices should be able to intentionally manage the transformative effects of the technologies that influence and shape their development. Moreover, the health sector policymakers should be aware of the ethical commitment to using IoT technology.