Digital Care and Human Death: Ethical Tensions at the End of Life

The digitization of healthcare - through electronic health records, predictive algorithms, remote monitoring, and automated decision-making tools - has revolutionized clinical workflows and optimized patient management. However, these developments often carry unintended consequences when applied to the end-of-life context, where the subjective, relational, and existential dimensions of dying resist abstraction and quantification. This paper explores the tensions between digital efficiency and the human realities of death, arguing that the virtuality of digital health systems risks alienating patients, families, and clinicians at precisely the moments where care must be most embodied and relational. Drawing from a conceptual analysis informed by medical ethics and palliative care literature, we examine how virtual representations (data, dashboards, protocols) interact with real dying bodies and social relationships. Through case illustrations, we highlight how systems designed for efficiency can unintentionally marginalize suffering, flatten complex narratives, and displace the rituals and presence that define authentic death. Our findings suggest a pressing need to reorient digital health design to account for the limits of representation and the irreplaceability of human connection at the end of life. We argue that any future model of digital care must not only prioritize outcomes but also preserve dignity, ambiguity, and relational integrity in death.