The Bioethics and Law Observatory publishes a report on the assessment of research projects on health with emerging technologies and personal data

Recerca The interests of science, technology and society should not prevail over those of the individual. Guaranteeing this principle is one of the main tasks in the research ethics committees (CER), interdisciplinary collegiate bodies set by the law which analyse the scientific validity of research studies and its social value, and which study the rights and interests at stake. Over the last years, the task of the CERs has broadened: not only they assess clinical trials with drugs and medical products but they also analyse projects that use emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, biometrics and virtual reality, among others. In this context, the Opinion Group of the Bioethics and Law Observatory - UNESCO Chair in Bioethics at the University of Barcelona (OBD) has published the report Guidelines for reviewing health research and innovation projects that use emergent technologies and personal data , in which they treat challenges, unsolved questions and problems that arise in the research and health innovation projects. In its first part, the report analyses the current situation and focuses on the use of personal data. The situation of the pandemic has presented several ethical challenges, for instance those related to the development of applications that request personal data and add geolocation. This kind of challenges are also presented in those projects that develop COVID-19 prediction systems based on the programming of algorithms that feed from different sets of personal data, stored in clinical records and other data bases.