Meeting Dr Jonah

The purpose of this viewpoint is to draw attention to a relatively new set of ethical challenges presented by pills contain sensors and other similar “nanobots” that send information back to the doctor and to call for a public dialogue on these issues.

The approach for this paper is to examine recent news reports on these new technologies and suggest an approach to an ethical framework based on similar challenges in digital privacy.

Based on the rapid evolution of the technology, the author believes that there are four critical areas to be considered to create an ethical framework for implantable/ingestible devices that transmit real-time information – informed consent, anonymization, approved usage and the right of deletion.

The findings will need to be augmented once these devices are in common use to evaluate the real-world viability of the ethical framework proposed.

To the best of our knowledge, evaluations of the ethical challenges represented by ingestible devices transmitting real-time data, if they exist, have been limited to specialized journals and have not been the subject of broader discussion.