The Ethics of Algorithms in Healthcare.

The amount of data available to healthcare practitioners is growing, and the rapid increase in available patient data is becoming a problem for healthcare practitioners, as they are often unable to fully survey and process the data relevant for the treatment or care of a patient. Consequently, there are currently several efforts to develop systems that can aid healthcare practitioners with reading and processing patient data and, in this way, provide them with a better foundation for decision-making about the treatment and care of patients. There are also efforts to develop algorithms that provide suggestions for such decisions.

Attitudes of Patients and Health Professionals Regarding Screening Algorithms: Qualitative Study.

Background: As a preamble to an attempt to develop a tool that can aid health professionals at hospitals in identifying whether the patient may have an alcohol abuse problem, this study investigates opinions and attitudes among both health professionals and patients about using patient data from electronic health records (EHRs) in an algorithm screening for alcohol problems.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the attitudes and opinions of patients and health professionals at hospitals regarding the use of previously collected data in developing and implementing an algorithmic helping tool in EHR for screening inexpedient alcohol habits; in addition, the study aims to analyze how patients would feel about asking and being asked about alcohol by staff, based on a notification in the EHR from such a tool.

Methods: Using semistructured interviews, we interviewed 9 health professionals and 5 patients to explore their opinions and attitudes about an algorithm-based helping tool and about asking and being asked about alcohol usage when being given a reminder from this type of tool.