Metodo

International Studies in Phenomenology and Philosophy

Journal | Volume | Article

216598

The digital phenotype

a philosophical and ethical exploration

Michele Loi

pp. 155-171

Abstract

The concept of the digital phenotype has been used to refer to digital data prognostic or diagnostic of disease conditions. Medical conditions may be inferred from the time pattern in an insomniac's tweets, the Facebook posts of a depressed individual, or the web searches of a hypochondriac. This paper conceptualizes digital data as an extended phenotype of humans, that is as digital information produced by humans and affecting human behavior and culture. It argues that there are ethical obligations to persons affected by generalizable knowledge of a digital phenotype, not only those who are personally identifiable or involved in data generation. This claim is illustrated by considering the health-related digital phenotypes of precision medicine and digital epidemiology.

Publication details

Published in:

Mittelstadt Brent (2019) The ethics of biomedical "Big Data" analytics. Philosophy & Technology 32 (1).

Pages: 155-171

DOI: 10.1007/s13347-018-0319-1

Full citation:

Loi Michele (2019) „The digital phenotype: a philosophical and ethical exploration“. Philosophy & Technology 32 (1), 155–171.