A digital health trust framework guided by values from the science of yoga

Abstract

Abstract The ongoing digital age is reengineering a global health system supported and strengthened by digital technologies. However, a fundamental mistrust still exists among innovators, health care professionals, policy-makers and the public, with digital health technologies often considered untrustworthy. Values build trust, and the ‘values’ of digital health technologies are their ethical principles. This manuscript contributes two broad and unique additions to the ongoing conversation on digital health and trust. Firstly, it suggests four major ethics (privacy, agency, safety, security) as the pillars of a pass framework to trust digital health technologies. Secondly, it perceives these ethics as values that help build trust, through the lens of yoga. Observing these two conditions, it infers that the foundations of the science of yoga present values that help digital health technologies pass the trust test.