Online platforms, digital tools, and ethics in Biomedical research

Abstract

Research opportunities have been expanded and the feasibility of doing research and accessibility to data has been increased over the past few decades with the development of online platforms and digital tools. The use of the online platform to collect data has become a popular mode recently with the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers and ethics review committees both need to be aware of the measures to be taken to implement ethically sound online research. Moreover, researchers need to understand that though the data collection is done differently, basic ethical principles (autonomy, justice, beneficence and non-maleficence) apply to any research endeavour (WMA, 2013).