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Short abstract

This presentation shares early insights from a PhD project examining how ethics is negotiated and embedded in the development of InSilico Health solutions. It explores how interdisciplinary actors integrate ethical reflection into research, decision-making, and innovation practices.

Long abstract

The rise of InSilico Health (ISH) technologies, particularly Virtual Human Twins (VHT), signals a potential shift in biomedical research and healthcare innovation (Marques et al., 2024). By simulating biological processes, these technologies aim to advance precision medicine and improve clinical trials, although their effectiveness remains uncertain to date (Leo et al., 2022; Pappalardo et al., 2019; Rousseau et al., 2024; Samei, 2025). Alongside these developments, ethical frameworks such as Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications (ELSI), Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), and Technology Assessment (TA) seek to guide their responsible development and use, yet their integration into daily innovation practices and their influence on decision-making and technology development remains unclear (Elhadj et al., 2024; de Jong, 2025).

This presentation draws on early insights from an ongoing PhD project that uses an empirical ethics approach to examine how ethics is positioned, negotiated, and operationalized among interdisciplinary human and non-human actors in the development of InSilico solutions for medical research and healthcare. Rather than treating ethics as an external or merely formal requirement, this study approaches ethics as an active and dynamic component of research practice, one that is negotiated, contextually shaped, and influenced by broader social, institutional and power dynamics, while also shaping decision-making and the development of ISH technologies.

The presentation outlines the project’s central research questions and conceptual framework and invites discussion on the role of ethics, the allocation of responsibilities, and the practices through which ethical reflection is embedded in interdisciplinary research.