Digital Bioethics Network

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sabine Salloch
• Subject Area: Practical Philosophy ; Medical Informatics and Medical Bioinformatics ; Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 525059925

The methodological spectrum of bioethics is currently undergoing significant changes due to the increasing uptake of informatics and data science technologies for the treatment of ethical issues in health care and biomedical research. This domain of “Digital Bioethics” is still in its infancy, but already today presents itself as a considerably wide and heterogeneous field. For example, there are approaches primarily addressing ethical research questions whereas other projects have a stronger focus on the needs of clinical practice or on policy advice. There is also considerable variation in the underlying data bases which include, for example, Social Media and document analyses, published ethical case descriptions or electronic health records. In the new research domain profound content-related and methodological, but also sociological and science political issues emerge. An institutionalized network of Digital Bioethics researchers is so far not existent in the German-speaking countries. Against this background the requested Digital Bioethics Network will sound out and structure future perspectives of scientific research and contribute to the establishment, networking and quality of the new research domain in the German-speaking countries. The network will address Digital Bioethics in its full breadth and has a dynamic, critical and interdisciplinary character. The selection of network members is guided by the aim of ensuring disciplinary variety and at the same time allows for a clear focus on Digital Bioethics and relevant precursor and parallel debates, e.g. from machine ethics or the Digital Humanities. The scientific cooperation encompasses four meetings and accompanying further events such as a digital journal club. Internationally leading experts on Digital Bioethics are invited as guests to the network meetings. Concrete project aims include the creation of a special issue of an international journal, a joint grant application and the development of perspectives for realizing databases in Digital Bioethics.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks