Table 1.

Domains of analysis in a sociotechnical approach to digital health ethics.

Domain of analysis	Brief description	Example ethical issue
Application Software	The lines of code that constitute a given digital health technology and the health-related practices they compel and discourage	Algorithms that perform with lesser degrees of accuracy for structurally marginalized communities.
Material devices and supply chains	The actual material used to build and distribute the devices through which humans interact with digital health technologies	The negative environmental effects of mining for materials to build digital devices.
Infrastructures	The infrastructure that is required for digital health to function, including material realities such as the buildings in which health care providers work when delivering virtual care, the cables and wires that enable digital signals to travel over distance, and the corporate structures of the organizations that make digital communication available	Lack of access to the Internet for people living in rural and remote areas.
Individual health-related practices	The activities and routines that are compelled by the use of digital health technologies	Adverse mental health implications of continual health-related surveillance.
Interpersonal relationships	Digital health technologies have the capacity to impact interpersonal relationships, through shaping the sources of information, expectations, and modes of interaction available to people	Negative impacts on interpersonal relationships as a result of health-related misinformation shared on social media.
Organizational policies	The structure, function and routines that characterize organizations, and the ways in which these are formalized in organizational rules and policies	The institution of corporate surveillance on staff.
Government policy and regulatory capture	The rules and approaches to governance put in place by state actors, and the influence of digital health stakeholders such as large technology corporations over health-related government policy	The growth in influence of large corporate technology companies over health-related policy.