Dr. AI Will See You Now

Should We Tell Patients When AI is Being Used in Their Care?

Increasingly, AI is being used in hospitals without patients’ knowledge of its use in their care, let alone their consent. For example, AI is being used to predict the likelihood that a cancer patient will die within the next six months. Hospitals and clinicians are deploying this technology, in large part, without disclosing to patients that it is being used. But the AI may be unproven and prone to bias. This episode will delve into the issues around the technologies themselves – do they work? How autonomous are they? – as well as the thorny questions that arise as they infiltrate the world of patient care – do some of these systems make patients unwitting research subjects? Does the use of AI erode patients’ trust in doctors? Ravi Parikh (a practicing oncologist and bioethicist) and Cynthia Chauhan (a patient advocate) offer two viewpoints, while Nic Terry (an expert in the intersection of health, law, and technology) predicts what legal challenges lay ahead.

Created with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Cammann Fund at Harvard University.