A Novel Pathway for Integrating Ethics into Digital Technology Design: A Person-Centred Co-Design Approach Developed in the Context of Assistive Technologies for Older Adults.

How can we effectively incorporate ethical considerations into technology design? Several frameworks and evaluation methods focused on ethical aspects of new and emerging technologies have been proposed over the past two decades. Despite this, we still lack a robust pathway for integrating ethical considerations into the design process. We examine three existing methods: ethical technology assessment, value-sensitive design, and embedded ethics. Drawing on their strengths and limitations, we propose a novel pathway for integrating ethics (PIE) that is flexible, multi-disciplinary, and person-centred. It consists of four stages: (1) bringing ethicists and designers together; (2) identifying ethical tensions; (3) exploring solutions to ethical tensions through stakeholder engagement; (4) integrating identified solutions into technology design. This pathway has been developed in the context of digital assistive technology for older adults’ care, building on the principles of person-centred care and co-design, and embeds four fundamental values: inclusivity, collaboration, flexibility, and practicality. This novel approach could also be expanded into other areas of digital health technology design and development.