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issues are associated with the informed consent in the development of drugs for

patients with psychiatric illnesses (Carrier, Banayan, Boley, & Karnik, 2017). Pace

of development of new surgical technologies continues to increase which brings
about a magnitude of ethical issues such as safety of technology, obtaining informed

consent from the patient (vulnerability related issues) and outcome evaluation

(Geiger & Hirschl, 2015). Hence, with the advancement of science and innovations,
it is important to heighten the awareness of ethical issues (among

researcher/inventors, members of review bodies and public etc) and to have
proactive ethical approach. Frequently, the new technology or invented clinical care

procedure is more expensive with limited availability to the general community.
Hence, accessibility and affordability of that innovation/service is limited to a

category of community who are powerful and socioeconomically privileged. In

multicenter international clinical trials, the benefits of the findings may not be
equally translated to all countries. Specially, the poor countries involved in the trial

may not be able to afford the drug or device tested. Equitable distribution of risks as
well as the benefits to eligible communities or patients is encouraged in all the

instances (Nambisan & Nambisan, 2017). Other common ethical concerns related to
innovations are source of funding and the associated conflict of interests which need

to be declared to maintain the transparency and the integrity of the innovation.

The designers need to pay a central attention to the important ethical issues related

to an innovation such as safety (occupational, customer and environmental etc),
efficiency, security, respect for human dignity-autonomy, reliability, privacy,

transparency, acceptability, accessibility and justice-equity) during the initial phase

of the development and frame their activities accordingly. In the selection of the
process of development and the related technology, it is imperative to address these

unique ethical issues (de Morais & Stückelberger, 2014). It is an integral component
of disclosure of ethical issues related to the innovation during the initial discussions

and at the stage of seeking ethical approval, rather than discussing it as an after-
thought when a problem arises (Brusoni & Vaccaro, 2017).

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