Drones are proposed as a way to increase productivity in public health with limited staff and resources. To fully realize the advantages of this technology and safeguard those who may be harmed, this study frames the experimental use of drones. A moral framework is provided to guide planning, creation, application, and evaluation of drones in public health, organized around principles of justice and explicability ethics. The study proposes a translation method to operationalize these ethical principles, resulting in a paradigm that helps identify ethical concerns during design, deployment, and evaluation of drones in healthcare. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.