Yan Yang
As the trend of population aging is accelerating, health data privacy protection in smart elderly care has gained more significance to resolve ethical issues and contribute to the sustainable development of digital elderly care. This paper will review the literature, policies, regulations and technical standards and use grounded theory using open, axial and selective coding to determine major ethical aspects and develop a theoretical framework. The results indicate that the framework can be divided into four dimensions: compliance governance and risk control, individual rights and dignity protection, structural fairness and procedural justice, and collaborative governance with trusted innovation. The institutional base is compliance governance, the fundamental value is rights protection, balanced governance is facilitated by structural fairness, and continuous improvement is facilitated by collaborative innovation. Combined, these dimensions constitute an ethical system of governance that incorporates institutional regulation, rights protection, equitable governance, and technological innovation. This paper offers a theoretical approach to privacy protection of health data in smart elderly care. Nevertheless, additional empirical studies should be conducted to evaluate the applicability of the framework in various practical contexts.