ArticleScience and engineering ethics2020
The Limits of Empowerment: How to Reframe the Role of mHealth Tools in the Healthcare Ecosystem.
Article in Science and engineering ethics, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 34 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
34 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 103 citations in OpenAlex.
- Emerging technologies and vulnerabilities in older adults with cognitive impairments: a systematic review of qualitative evidence.BMC geriatrics · 2026Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Termination of pregnancy for fetal anomaly: a systematic review of the healthcare experiences and needs of parents.BMC pregnancy and childbirth · 2022Pooled it
- An Artificial Intelligence-Based App for Self-Management of Low Back and Neck Pain in Specialist Care: Process Evaluation From a Randomized Clinical Trial.JMIR human factors · 2024Trial
- Beyond the Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence, Clinical Decision-Making, and the Moral Ecology of Care in Africa.Science and engineering ethics · 2026Article
- Creating a Basic Ethical Framework for Digital Lifestyle Interventions: A Narrative Review.Mayo Clinic proceedings. Digital health · 2025Review
- The ethical aspects of human organ-on-chip models: A mapping review.Stem cell reports · 2025Review
- Managerial Challenges in Digital Health: Bibliometric and Network Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Article
- Beyond Individual Responsibilisation: How Social Relations are Mobilised in Communication About a Dementia Self-Testing App.Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy · 2024Article
- Facilitators of and Barriers to Teachers' Engagement With Consumer Technologies for Stress Management: Qualitative Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Self-Testing for Dementia: A Phenomenological Analysis of Fear.The Journal of medical humanities · 2024Article
- Scoping Review Shows the Dynamics and Complexities Inherent to the Notion of "Responsibility" in Artificial Intelligence within the Healthcare Context.Asian bioethics review · 2024Article
- Transforming Healthcare with AI: Promises, Pitfalls, and Pathways Forward.International journal of general medicine · 2024Article
- High School Teachers' Experiences of Consumer Technologies for Stress Management During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Qualitative Study.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Healthiness as a Virtue: The Healthism of mHealth and the Challenges to Public Health.Public health ethics · 2023Article
- Acceptability Criteria of Precision Medicine: Lessons From Patients' Experiences With the GUIDE-IBD Trial Regarding the Use of Mobile Health Technology.Crohn's & colitis 360 · 2023Article
- Evaluation of the Rosa Chatbot Providing Genetic Information to Patients at Risk of Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer: Qualitative Interview Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Empowerment through health self-testing apps? Revisiting empowerment as a process.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2023Article
- Commercial mHealth Apps and Unjust Value Trade-offs: A Public Health Perspective.Public health ethics · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This article highlights the limitations of the tendency to frame health- and wellbeing-related digital tools (mHealth technologies) as empowering devices, especially as they play an increasingly important role in the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. It argues that mHealth technologies should instead be framed as digital companions. This shift from empowerment to companionship is advocated by showing the conceptual, ethical, and methodological issues challenging the narrative of empowerment, and by arguing that such challenges, as well as the risk of medical paternalism, can be overcome by focusing on the potential for mHealth tools to mediate the relationship between recipients of clinical advice and givers of clinical advice, in ways that allow for contextual flexibility in the balance between patiency and agency. The article concludes by stressing that reframing the narrative cannot be the only means for avoiding harm caused to the NHS as a healthcare system by the introduction of mHealth tools. Future discussion will be needed on the overarching role of responsible design.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.