The Record

Artificial Intelligence in the Medical System: Four Roles for Potential Transformation

Artificial intelligence (AI) looks to transform the practice of medicine. As academics and policymakers alike turn to legal questions, a threshold issue involves what role AI will play in the larger medical system.

Artificial Intelligence-Based Suicide

Suicidal thoughts and behaviors are an international public health problem contributing to 800,000 annual deaths and up to 25 million nonfatal suicide attempts. In the United States, suicide rates have increased steadily for two decades, reaching 47,000 per year and surpassing annual motor vehicle deaths. This trend has prompted government agencies, healthcare systems, and multinational corporations to invest in artificial intelligence-based suicide prediction algorithms. This article describes these tools and the underexplored risks they pose to patients and consumers.

AIs as Substitute Decision-Makers

We are witnessing an interesting juxtaposition in medical decision-making. Increasingly, health providers are moving away from traditional substitute decision-making for patients who have lost decisional capacity, towards supported decision-making. Supported decision-making increases patient autonomy as the patient—with the support and assistance of others—remains the final decisionmaker. By contrast, doctors’ decision-making capacity is diminishing due to the increasing use of AI to diagnose and treat patients.

Artificial Professional Advice

What does it mean to give professional advice, and how do things change when various forms of technology, such as decision-support software or predictive advice-generating algorithms, are inserted into the process of professional advicegiving? Professional advice is valuable to clients because of the asymmetry between lay and expert knowledge where professionals have knowledge that their clients lack. But technology is increasingly changing the traditional process of professional advice-giving.
 

Big Data: Destroyer of Informed Consent

The ‘Revised Common Rule’ took effect on January 21, 2019, marking the first change since 2005 to the federal regulation that governs human subjects research conducted with federal support or in federally supported institutions. The Common Rule had required informed consent before researchers could collect and use identifiable personal health information.