Camille Nebeker (UC San Diego)

The Digital Revolution: The Potential Promise and Ethical Perils in Research

Digital tools including apps, wearable sensors, and social network platforms offer unprecedented opportunities for research. However, this rapidly evolving landscape is outpacing existing regulatory structures for protecting research participants. In addition, new actors in the scientific community, including technology companies and citizen scientists are not bound by the rules used by traditional academic researchers to guide responsible and ethical research. Dr. Nebeker will describe how technologies are being leveraged to capture personal health data for research drawing attention to nuanced technical and ethical aspects that require careful consideration during the study design phase. She will underscore the important role of funding agencies, policymakers, editors, researchers and ethicists in creating the infrastructure necessary to allow digital health research to flourish.

About the Speaker

Camille Nebeker, Ed.D., M.S. is an associate professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health, School of Medicine at UC San Diego with a primary appointment in Behavioral Medicine and a secondary appointment in Global Health. She directs the Research Center for Optimal Digital Ethics (ReCODE.Health) and is an affiliated investigator with the UC San Diego Design Lab, the Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems and Center for Healthy Aging. Dr. Nebeker’s expertise is in: 1- human research ethics applied to biotechnologies and, 2- capacity building to support community research and citizen science.