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Artificial intelligence as a feminist bioethics issue
Published in Wendy A. Rogers, Jackie Leach Scully, Stacy M. Carter, Vikki A. Entwistle, Catherine Mills, The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Bioethics, 2022
Promises of better health outcomes notwithstanding, longstanding intersecting bioethical issues persist in the expanding arena of AI health technologies. In particular, there are questions around whether the opacity of DL neural networks, non-transparent data sharing practices, and uncertain clinical value and safety of these emerging technologies may compromise people’s ability to provide truly informed consent and avoid iatrogenic harm that may result from inaccurate or biased AI analytics. From breast cancer screening to fertility and IVF prediction models, concerns abound regarding the data quality, evidence gaps, or clinical applicability for many AI-powered platforms (Peragallo Urrutia et al. 2018; Houssami et al. 2019; Wang et al. 2019; Carter et al. 2020).
Sparking and Sustaining the Essential Functions of Research
Published in Thomas S. Inui, Richard M. Frankel, Enhancing the Professional Culture of Academic Health Science Centers, 2022
At the end of the 1800s Japan began looking to the West for new ideas in science, medicine, and emerging technologies. The government at that time looked at medical care and medical education in several European countries and decided to import a particular German style of academic medicine. There were really only two imports the government considered: particular values and a particular structure. In terms of values, they imported what was a kind of “biomedical absolutism,” by which I mean prioritizing the discovery of a single, objective, fundamental cause of a disease, and ultimately finding a cure. In terms of structure, it imported a top-down, academy-centric style. The latter defined the social responsibility of academic medicine. The mission of the Imperial University of Tokyo, for example, was to create professors for other new universities. Its mission was to disseminate the 19th-century values of Western medicine from the top down, throughout Japan.
Evidence-Based Medicine and Resource Allocation
Published in Rui Nunes, Healthcare as a Universal Human Right, 2022
Access to pharmaceuticals as well as the overall healthcare policy is grounded in an accepted right to healthcare access, notwithstanding the fact that priorities must be set even in the access to useful medicines. Further, in a global environment of health research, health biotechnology will challenge the ethical limits of any healthcare system at the national and global levels (Zhenzhen et al. 2004). Indeed, any healthcare system will face the pressure of emerging technologies, which must be carefully evaluated both in publicly financed systems and in more liberal ones (Kaebnick and Gusmano 2018). Precision medicine is a good example of this.
Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing for “Non-Medical” Traits: Ensuring Consistency in Ethical Decision-Making
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics, 2023
Hilary Bowman-Smart, Christopher Gyngell, Cara Mand, David J. Amor, Martin B. Delatycki, Julian Savulescu
It is important to note that the utilization of polygenic scores to predict a variety of traits is currently of limited use for a variety of reasons that will be explored (Duncan et al. 2019; Martin et al. 2019). Although proponents of the use of polygenic scores emphasize their potential, it may be the case that even with further research, they are ultimately not useful in reproductive decision-making. Nonetheless, it is important to assess the ethical issues associated with emerging technologies before they become possible, even if some of these technologies do not mature. It is also important to note that these technologies may come into use even if they remain relatively unreliable, particularly in the DTC sector, if there is consumer demand for such a test and companies oversell test performance.
A new paradigm in adverse drug reaction reporting: consolidating the evidence for an intervention to improve reporting
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Safety, 2022
Raymond Li, Kate Curtis, Syed Tabish Zaidi, Connie Van, Ronald Castelino
Encouragingly, the chronic under-reporting of ADRs is getting much needed attention as evident from increasing literature in this area. Several barriers remain though emerging technologies and digital transformation over the last few years presents a tremendous opportunity in the new era of healthcare management. It is evident that a vast quantity of personal health data exists digitally across multiple channels in health insurance databases, reimbursement datasets, eHealth records, etc., and this presents a tremendous opportunity for the adoption of automation and artificial intelligence to analyze and extract ADR data. Existing technologies already exist in this area for the detection of ADRs, and the future lies in taking the next step of reporting this information to health regulators at an individual level. Emphasis should be placed on newly approved medicines and black triangle medicines where their safety profiles have not yet been fully characterized. In addition, ADRs that are new and/or unexpected should be prioritized for reporting. Therefore, an all-in-one digital tool that automatically identifies and reports specific ADRs for selected medicines is the gold standard to aspire toward for future ADR reporting. This would significantly enhance real-world outcomes of patient safety as understanding the safety profile of new medicines leads to more informed prescribing and considered use of these medicines in the right-patient populations. This would also reduce the extent and severity of ADRs occurring in patients if they are well known and can be adequately managed.
Emerging technologies for combating pandemics
Published in Expert Review of Medical Devices, 2022
Edward Weaver, Shahid Uddin, Dimitrios A. Lamprou
As defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), a pandemic is a disease that spreads and has a subsequent impact on a global scale [1]. The most potent and recent example of which is the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19 pandemic), which has contributed to reshaping the world perception on the requirement for modern solutions to provide protection against such events. Past notable pandemics include the Spanish flu H1N1, 1918, infecting a third of the world’s population and claiming the lives of approximately 50 M people [2], or the Asian Flu H2N2, 1957–1958, causing 1.1 M deaths [3]. Whilst the current number of infections and deaths relating to covid-19 continues to rise, it’s clear that barriers must be developed for the future, to limit the strain caused by pandemic diseases. Emerging technologies within the healthcare sector are examples of contemporary advancements designed with the intention of achieving such goals when implemented for specific uses. As is the case for infectious diseases, prevention and diagnosis can frequently be just as important as the therapeutic aspect, hence all characteristics must be considered to provide an effective encompassing treatment plan. Discussed within this review are a variety of emerging technologies (ET), such as additive manufacturing (AM), biofabrication, Microfluidics (MFs), biomedical microelectromechanical systems (BioMEMS) and artificial intelligence (AI), and how they are being utilized in the fight against both covid-19 and for any future pandemics that may arise.