Abstract The use of digital solutions in African healthcare is being pursued to address health challenges and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals for Health. Digital health data offers continuous insights that are valuable for patient care, research, and public health. Ethical considerations must guide the use of technology to ensure it serves as a tool and not replace personal judgement. Cognisant that marginalised contexts require designs sensitive to local realities, we adopt a sociotechnical systems perspective, to examine the roles of people, infrastructure, technology, culture, and processes in shaping digital health applications. Using a multi-case design, we explore factors influencing digital health systems and evaluate the effectiveness of existing regulatory and ethical frameworks in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our findings highlight the growing demand for digital health data and the ethical challenges posed by emerging technologies. We conclude with key recommendations for frameworks that could improve ethical digital health designs and governance.
Benedict Mkalama (Thu,) studied this question.