The Absence of Institutional Ethics in Intelligent Public Health Governance and Its Reconstruction: A Normative Analysis Based on Value Sensitive Design
刊名 Medicinal Plant
作者 Liang LI, Junyu TAO
作者单位 Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine;Guangxi Key Laboratory of Translational Medicine for Treating Infectious Diseases with Integrative Medicine
DOI DOI:10.19600/j.cnki.issn2152-3924.2026.03.021
年份 2026
刊期 3
页码 99-103,107
关键词 Intelligent public health governance, Institutional ethics, Value sensitive design (VSD), Algorithmic ethics, Health equity, Ethical institutionalization
摘要 This paper introduces value sensitive design (VSD) and institutional ethics theory, proposes a diagnostic framework of “institutional ethics absence”, and differentiates between the two paradigms of “technical ethics embedding” and “institutional ethics reconstruction”. The analysis indicates that the prevailing ethical challenges in the intelligent public health governance do not stem from technical limitations. Instead, they reflect an external manifestation of the absence of institutional ethics. Although ethical principles are broadly proclaimed, there is a deficiency in operational mechanisms to transform these principles into institutional regulations, leading to “institutional hollowness” wherein principles exist nominally but lack substantive enforcement. The article elucidates the integration pathway between VSD and institutional ethics: VSD offers a methodological foundation for embedding ethical considerations into design, whereas institutional ethics provides a “meta-institutional” guarantee for the design process. Together, these approaches facilitate the “dual embedding” of ethical requirements at both technological and institutional levels. This paper develops a three-tiered institutional reconstruction pathway centered on the core concepts of “precaution, human subjectivity, and justice”. It integrates the frameworks of technical standard setting, organizational ethics review, and legal accountability, thereby offering theoretical support for the ethical legitimacy of intelligent public health governance in the digital era.