Ethical Prioritization Framework for the Responsible Integration of AI- and IoMT-Enabled Smart Medical Devices

The integration of smart medical devices (SMDs) driven by artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of medical things (IoMT) is revolutionizing healthcare through improved diagnostics and continuous monitoring. However, their deployment raises significant ethical concerns, including patient safety, data privacy, informed consent, fairness, bias, and regulatory compliance. This paper presents a structured prioritization framework that assesses these ethical considerations according to their severity, contextual impact, and relevance to clinical practice. The usefulness of this prioritization lies in its ability to guide stakeholders to focus on high-impact areas, ensuring that resources and interventions address the most critical ethical risks first. Targeted mitigation strategies support the application of this framework in practice. By aligning innovation with ethical responsibility, this approach promotes safer, fairer, and more reliable healthcare solutions. This ultimately enables the sustainable and socially responsible integration of SMDs into modern medical systems.