ArticleJournal of global health2020
The ethics and value of contact tracing apps: International insights and implications for Scotland's COVID-19 response.
Article in Journal of global health, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Tell people and lose what I have: Care-seeking, concealment, and disclosure during Sierra Leone's 2025 clade IIb mpox outbreak.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Ethics of Wearable-Based Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Detection.Circulation. Arrhythmia and electrophysiology · 2024Review
- The use of individual tracking programs in public health: a bioethics dilemma.Revista brasileira de enfermagem · 2024Article
- Qualitative comparative analysis of policies implemented by 26 European countries during the 2020 great lockdown.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Widening or narrowing inequalities? The equity implications of digital tools to support COVID-19 contact tracing: A qualitative study.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2022Article
- In the shadow of privacy: Overlooked ethical concerns in COVID-19 digital epidemiology.Epidemics · 2022Article
- Standardizing, harmonizing, and protecting data collection to broaden the impact of COVID-19 research: the rapid acceleration of diagnostics-underserved populations (RADx-UP) initiative.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2022Review
- Delineating privacy aspects of COVID tracing applications embedded with proximity measurement technologies & digital technologies.Technology in society · 2022Article
- Tracing app technology: an ethical review in the COVID-19 era and directions for post-COVID-19.Ethics and information technology · 2022Review
- Identifying and addressing digital health risks associated with emergency pandemic response: Problem identification, scoping review, and directions toward evidence-based evaluation.International journal of medical informatics · 2022Article
- Health vs. privacy? The risk-risk tradeoff in using COVID-19 contact-tracing apps.Technology in society · 2021Article
- Contact Tracing Apps: Lessons Learned on Privacy, Autonomy, and the Need for Detailed and Thoughtful Implementation.JMIR medical informatics · 2021Article
- Challenges for Nontechnical Implementation of Digital Proximity Tracing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Media Analysis of the SwissCovid App.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2021Article
- COVID-19 surveillance systems in African countries.Health promotion perspectives · 2021Review
- Digital contact-tracing during the Covid-19 pandemic: An analysis of newspaper coverage in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.PloS one · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has put health systems, economies and societies under unprecedented strain, calling for innovative approaches. Scotland's government, like those elsewhere, is facing difficult decisions about how to deploy digital technologies and data to help contain, control and manage the disease, while also respecting citizens' rights. This paper explores the ethical challenges presented by these methods, with particular emphasis on mobile apps associated with contact tracing. Drawing on UK and international experiences, it examines issues such as public trust, data privacy and technology design; how changing disease threats and contextual factors can affect the balance between public benefits and risks; and the importance of transparency, accountability and stakeholder participation for the trustworthiness and good-governance of digital systems and strategies. Analysis of recent technology debates, controversial programmes and emerging outcomes in comparable countries implementing contact tracing apps, reveals sociotechnical complexities and unexpected paradoxes that warrant further study and underlines the need for holistic, inclusive and adaptive strategies. The paper also considers the potential role of these apps as Scotland transitions to the 'new normal', outlines challenges and opportunities for public engagement, and poses a set of ethical questions to inform decision-making at multiple levels, from software design to institutional governance.
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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.