REVIEW article
Front. Digit. Health
Sec. Ethical Digital Health
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2025.1662642
Ethics of AI in Healthcare: A Scoping Review Demonstrating Applicability of a Foundational Framework
Provisionally accepted
Aaron J Gorelik1Mengyuan Li2Jessica Hahne1Junyi Wang2Yongqi Ren2Lei Yang2Xin Zhang3
Xing Liu3
Xiaomin Wang4*
Ryan Bogdan1Brian D Carpenter1- 1Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, Washington University in St Louis, St. Louis, United States
- 2School of Humanities, Central South University, Changsha, China
- 3Xiangya Hospital Central South University, Changsha, China
- 4Center of Clinical Pharmacology, Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly being adopted across many industries including healthcare. This has brought forth the development of many new independent ethical frameworks for responsible use of AI within institutions and companies. Risks associated with the application of AI in healthcare have high stakes for patients. Further, the existence of multiple frameworks may exacerbate these risks due to potential differences in interpretation and prioritization in said frameworks. Resolving these risks requires an ethical framework that is both broadly adopted in health care settings and applicable to AI. Here, we examined whether a framework consisting of the 4 well-established principles of biomedical ethics (i.e., Beneficence, Non-Maleficence, Respect for Autonomy, and Justice) can serve as a foundation for an ethical framework for AI in healthcare. To this end, we conducted a scoping review of 227 peer-reviewed papers using semi-inductive thematic analyses to categorize patient-related ethical issues in healthcare AI under these 4 principles of biomedical ethics. We found that these principles, which are already widely adopted in healthcare settings, were comprehensively and internationally applicable to ethical considerations concerning use of AI in healthcare. The existing four principles of biomedical ethics can provide a foundational ethical framework for applying AI in healthcare, grounding other Responsible AI frameworks, and can act as a basis for AI governance and policy in healthcare.
Keywords: ethics1, Artificial Intelligence2, Responsible AI3, healthcare4, Beneficence5, Non-Maleficence6, Autonomy7, Justice8
Received: 09 Jul 2025; Accepted: 25 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gorelik, Li, Hahne, Wang, Ren, Yang, Zhang, Liu, Wang, Bogdan and Carpenter. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiaomin Wang, Center of Clinical Pharmacology, Third Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.