Although digital medicine promises unprecedented individualization through data-driven precision, this paper argues that the opposite trajectory could emerge. Unless medicine proceeds with caution, the patient risks being reduced to a statistical abstraction, removed from the physician’s moral and perceptual grasp, as digitalization accelerates. In the article, I discuss three possible distortions that could contribute to this trend: First, patients could be reduced to quantifiable data points through datafication. Second, several forms of bias may contribute to the homogenization of patients or the neglect of individuality. Third, virtualization in telemedicine may foster the fragmentation and depersonalization of the patient–physician encounter. Together, these developments risk diminishing rather than enhancing personalized care. The paper therefore calls for critical vigilance to ensure that technological innovation remains anchored in attentiveness to the unique, embodied individual—such that, in pursuing precision, medicine does not lose sight of the very person it seeks to serve.
In the field of medical humanities, illness narratives are often central to most discussions. However, Arabic-language illness narratives, particularly those written by males, are largely absent from this body of scholarship, which centres mostly on Anglophone corpora. This scholarly blind spot affects the linguistic as well as the cultural scope of research on embodied suffering and the voices of patients from Arabic-speaking regions. Thus, this study addresses this gap by reading illness narratives by two Egyptian male authors: the late Osama Eldanasouri’s Kalbi al-Harim Kalbi al-Habib: al-Nusus al-Akhira or [My Ageing Dog, My Beloved Dog: The Last Texts] (2007/2021) and the late Muhammad Abouelgheit’s Ana Qadim Ayyuha al-Daw’ or [Oh Light, I am Coming] (2022). The first is a narrative of Eldanasouri’s prolonged suffering from Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), resulting in his dependence on dialysis as a lifeline, while the other is an account of Abouelgheit’s terminal cancer. The study draws on Critical Medical Humanities’ attentiveness to gender and sociocultural factors in the embodied experience of illness; masculinity studies, especially the representation of the ill male body; and Michael Bury’s conceptualisation of biographical disruption. Utilising this combined framework, the study examines how representations of illness, death, and mortality vary across different illness temporalities (prolonged CKD vs accelerated mortality); how the narratives challenge conventional notions of masculinity; and how both narratives are shaped by contrasting medical geographies and institutional conditions. Read in tandem, these texts offer a more nuanced understanding of Bury’s rigid before/after model, often associated with biographical disruption, and steer the narratives towards autothanatography, where writing is influenced by a heightened awareness of narrowed futurity. In addition, the study argues that texts construct narratives of sick male patients not as a straightforward self-expression but as a negotiated response to bodily vulnerability as well as culturally valued forms of hegemonic masculinity. Meanwhile, the narratives construct an image of disparate illness experiences mediated by two different medical contexts. Thus, this adds to the ongoing critical medical humanities scholarship by analysing Arabic-language male illness narratives, which broadens the linguistic and cultural scope of the field.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in healthcare and may improve efficiency in clinical support, health management, and doctor-patient communication. Yet its tendency to hallucinate, that is, to generate medical information that appears plausible but is false, can create systemic ethical risks in high-risk medical settings. This paper addresses two questions: what distinctive ethical risks are created by medical AI hallucinations, and what governance mechanisms can respond to them? Using the four principles of biomedical ethics as an analytical tool, the paper identifies four risk pathways: weakened informed consent, erosion of doctor-patient trust, harm to life and health, and unfair responsibility allocation. It then introduces responsible research and innovation (RRI) to build a four-dimensional framework of anticipation, inclusion, reflexivity, and responsiveness. The main contribution of the paper is to integrate biomedical ethical principles with RRI governance tools in the specific context of medical AI hallucinations, developing a closed-loop governance matrix across technology development, clinical application, and regulatory oversight. This provides an operational pathway for moving medical AI from technical feasibility towards ethical trustworthiness.
Advances in biomedical technology have transformed dying into a prolonged, technological process in which clinical attention can drift from the person to physiological parameters. This narrative review argues that phenomenology offers an essential ethical corrective by foregrounding the lived experience of dying and complementing procedural bioethics, with particular attention to South Asia, where cultural, spiritual, and familial dimensions strongly shape end-of-life decisions. Drawing on classical phenomenologists and contemporary scholars of illness experience, the review synthesises insights on embodiment, finitude, relationality, and the disruption of worldhood in illness. These perspectives clarify how clinical objectification can eclipse the lived body, why accompanying the dying may be ethically preferable to the futile escalation of treatment, and how vulnerability calls forth responsibility, presence, and restraint. The review translates these themes into practical implications for critical and palliative care, emphasising temporal empathy, humanised communication, respectful touch, and the cultivation of homeliness through family presence and meaningful ritual. It further examines how dying is shaped across South Asia by overcrowded and under-resourced health systems, family-centred decision-making, and culturally mediated truth-telling. Particular attention is given to the region’s religious and philosophical horizons of death: Hindu conceptions of karma, mokṣa, and the good death; Buddhist teachings on impermanence, non-self, and mindful dying in both Theravāda and Vajrayāna settings; and Islamic understandings of divine trust, patience, and the limits of intervention. Phenomenological ethics, the review concludes, supports end-of-life care that is clinically responsible, morally intelligible, and culturally resonant.
Abstract Background Health equity research requires a comprehensive understanding of the historical, social, and political factors that contribute to health disparities. Ethiopia is a nation with a long political and economic history and a diverse culture, encompassing multiple health knowledge systems and traditional healing practices. This background context is essential for research, as the country faces significant health inequities among individuals and across community groups. This study aims to examine the consideration of context in health inequities research, with a focus on Ethiopia. Method This study used a Systematic Review Literature followed by Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS). Using a systematic search, we identified potential texts for inclusion. We searched three electronic databases, PubMed, HINARI, and Google Scholar, for publications up to June 30, 2023. Then, through systematic analysis followed by critical interpretive synthesis and conceptual translation, we developed a synthesizing argument about the trends in health inequities research. Findings Our systematic analysis and CIS reveal that a decontextualized approach dominates health inequity research in Ethiopia. This approach heavily relies on quantitative methods and repeatedly emphasizes wealth, education, and geographic location as key variables. Such emphasis obscures the underlying structural and political causes of inequity. Additionally, this decontextualized research is supported by a political economy of knowledge production that mainly depends on international funders and secondary data, which may prioritize measuring equality over pursuing meaningful equity. Conclusion The dominant research approach on Ethiopia focuses on quantitative methods and lacks contextual insight. This approach yields evidence that is inadequate for addressing the root causes of health inequality and inequity, as it unintentionally reinforces the very disparities it aims to eliminate by prioritizing technocratic solutions over transformative ones. Therefore, a crucial shift in epistemology toward contextually grounded, mixed-methods research supported by interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity is necessary to generate the knowledge required for meaningful and equitable change in Ethiopia and similar LMICs.
