Sustainable eThics Reviews of digital heAlth Technology dEsiGn In sub saharan afriCa

The STRATEGIC project aims to co-create responsible research and innovation approach that aligns with social-cultural values, principles, contexts, needs and interests in SSA and implement capacity development plans that can strengthen the ethics and regulatory capacity to ensure responsible digital health technologies for clinical research and practice. The project will involve SSA and EU partners and stakeholders and co-create functional resources, such as the STRATEGIC training materials. The urgency of strengthening ethics and legal infrastructure for digital health technologies in SSA is due to the increasing integration of digital technologies into clinical research and practice and the potential negative impacts of these systems on patients, communities and society. While most countries in the Global North have recognised the importance of responsible digital health technologies, the ethics and regulatory capacities for addressing the ethical and legal risks of these technologies are still lacking in SSA. The overarching aim of the STRATEGIC project is to co-create a theoretically strong, empirically supported and widely consulted responsible research and innovation approach and capacity development plan and materials that can strengthen relevant ethics and regulatory institutions for clinical research and practice in SSA. It will identify and map the existing ethical and legal infrastructure in SSA, highlighting the gaps and needs; use these insights to co-create an RRI approach and co-develop and implementing trainings that will also be interested into existing training infrastructure and network. It will also establish sustainable e-community that exist beyond the project. Methodologies to be used include, stakeholder engagement and co-creation strategies such as focus groups, consensus workshops and roundtable discussions.