Posthuman Ethics in Digital Health: Reimagining Autonomy, Consent, and Responsibility in Ai-augmented Care
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into digital health systems is transforming clinical decision-making,patient monitoring, and healthcare delivery at an unprecedented pace. This technological shift demands a radicalrethinking of traditional biomedical ethics frameworks, particularly concerning autonomy, consent, andresponsibility. From a broader perspective, posthuman ethics offers a philosophical lens that challengesanthropocentric assumptions, urging us to consider non-human agencies, distributed cognition, and techno-humanentanglements in ethical deliberations. By decentering the human subject and acknowledging the active role of AIsystems in shaping clinical environments, posthuman ethics enables a more nuanced and inclusive ethicalparadigm for digital health. As care becomes increasingly mediated by intelligent machines capable ofautonomous action and decision-support, the conventional notion of individual autonomy—grounded in rational,self-determined human agents—faces significant disruption. Similarly, informed consent must bereconceptualized to account for opaque algorithmic processes, evolving patient-machine relationships, and thedynamic nature of data-driven care. Responsibility, traditionally traced to discrete human actors such as cliniciansor institutions, must now grapple with the distributed and often unpredictable behavior of AI systems embeddedin complex socio-technical networks. This paper explores how posthuman ethics can help reimagine autonomy,consent, and responsibility in AI-augmented healthcare, advocating for ethical models that reflect hybrid agencies,relational ontologies, and continuous negotiation of care. It proposes a shift from individualistic, static principlesto adaptive, context-sensitive approaches that align with the realities of AI-integrated health systems. In doing so,it contributes to a critical, future-facing dialogue on how to ethically govern emerging digital health technologiesin ways that promote justice, trust, and shared accountability
Author: Pelumi Oladokun
Language: English
Subfield: Health Informatics
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6931002303