JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Responses to public health crises are increasingly technological in nature, as the prominence of numbers and simulations of the spread of Covid-19 has amply demonstrated. However, the use of technology is preconditional and has various implications. These can not only affect acceptance, but also challenge the acceptability of these technologies with regard to the ethical and normative dimension.

Objective:

This article focuses on pandemic simulation models as algorithmic governance tools that without doubt played a central role in political decision-making during the Covid-19 crisis. For the assessment of acceptability, the premises of data collection, sorting and evaluation must be disclosed and reflected upon. Consequently, it must be a matter of revealing the social construction principles of digital health technologies and examining them for their social and ethical implications.

Methods:

Looking at algorithm-based health crisis technologies, the role of transparency, which is difficult to achieve in the case of algorithmic code structures, will be analyzed. Besides, the ambivalences of public health technologies in relation to their social effects will be examined to develop an integrated perspective on the use of algorithmic health technologies.

Results:

The talk of objectivity and evidence in the context of mathematical simulation models urgently needs to be critically scrutinized. As algorithms have come to play a most influential role in the decision-making processes, the question of ethics assumes an utmost importance in the way we shape algorithms, and the way algorithms shape us.

Conclusions:

By bringing up the question of how we want to deal with future health crises it is striking that during the Corona pandemic there was a lack of socio-scientific knowledge mobilization. This contradicts the call for more interdisciplinary approaches in the development, implementation, and usage of digital medical applications.