ArticleBMC medical ethics2020
Digital pills: a scoping review of the empirical literature and analysis of the ethical aspects.
Article in BMC medical ethics, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Non-empirical methods for ethics research on digital technologies in medicine, health care and public health: a systematic journal review.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2024Pooled it
- Application of Digital Health Technologies in Cardiac Rehabilitation for Patients With Coronary Heart Disease: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2026Article
- Digital Therapeutics in Cardiovascular Healthcare: A Narrative Review.Current cardiology reports · 2025Review
- Are we all singing from the same song sheet? Standardizing terminology used in inter-professional telehealth education and practice: a mixed method study.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Attitudes toward digital pill systems for antiretroviral therapy adherence among pregnant and postpartum women living with HIV in South Africa: a qualitative study.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Reducing primary cesarean delivery rate through implementation of a smart intrapartum surveillance system.NPJ digital medicine · 2023Article
- Considering patient perspectives in economic evaluations of health interventions.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Bibliometric analysis and evidence of clinical efficacy and safety of digital pills.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2023Review
- Ingestible Electronic Sensors for Monitoring Real-time Adherence to HIV Pre-exposure Prophylaxis and Antiretroviral Therapy.Current HIV/AIDS reports · 2022Review
- "I'd feel like someone was watchin' me… watching for a good reason": perceptions of data privacy, access, and sharing in the context of real-time PrEP adherence monitoring among HIV-negative MSM with substance use.AIDS and behavior · 2022Article
- Digital Pills with Ingestible Sensors: Patent Landscape Analysis.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Technologies for Medication Adherence Monitoring and Technology Assessment Criteria: Narrative Review.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2022Review
- Acceptability of and Willingness to Take Digital Pills by Patients, the Public, and Health Care Professionals: Qualitative Content Analysis of a Large Online Survey.Journal of medical Internet research · 2022Article
- Development of a digital pill and respondent behavioral intervention (PrEPSteps) for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis adherence among stimulant using men who have sex with men.Translational behavioral medicine · 2022Article
- Biosensing Technology to Track Adherence: A Literature Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- What are the ethical implications of using prize-based contingency management in substance use? A scoping review.Harm reduction journal · 2021Article
- Exploring the Potential of Emerging Technologies to Meet the Care and Support Needs of Older People: A Delphi Survey.Geriatrics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Digital Health in Cardiac Rehabilitation and Secondary Prevention: A Search for the Ideal Tool.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Should We Aim to Create a Perfect Healthy Utopia? Discussions of Ethical Issues Surrounding the World of Project Itoh's Harmony.Science and engineering ethics · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDigital Pills (DP) are an innovative drug-device technology that permits to combine traditional medications with a monitoring system that automatically records data about medication adherence as well as patients' physiological data. Although DP are a promising innovation in the field of digital medicine, their use has also raised a number of ethical concerns. These ethical concerns, however, have been expressed principally from a theoretical perspective, whereas an ethical analysis with a more empirically oriented approach is lacking. There is also a lack of clarity about the empirical evidence available concerning the application of this innovative digital medicine.
methodsTo map the studies where DP have been tested on patients and discuss the ethically relevant issues evident therein, we performed a scoping review of the empirical literature concerning DP.
resultsOur search allowed us to identify 18 papers reporting on studies where DP were tested on patients. These included studies with different designs and involving patients with a variety of conditions. In the empirical literature, a number of issues with ethical relevance were evident. At the patient level, the ethical issues include users' interaction with DP, personal sphere, health-related risks and patients' benefits. At the provider level, ethically relevant issues touch upon the doctor-patient relationship and the question of data access. At the societal level, they concern the benefits to society, the quality of evidence and the dichotomy device-medicine.
conclusionsWe conclude that evidence concerning DP is not robust and that more research should be performed and study results made available to evaluate this digital medicine. Moreover, our analysis of the ethically relevant aspects within empirical literature underscores that there are concrete and specific open questions that should be tackled in the ethical discussion about this new technological solution.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.