Ensuring that digital health solutions help, not harm

A health risk prediction algorithm used on over 200 million people across the country has been found to be racially biased.

A third of the top 100 hospitals in the US have been found to be using a tracking tool called Meta Pixel to collect and send patients’ personal health information to Facebook without their consent.

Pulse oximeters — digital devices that use beams of infrared light to measure the amount of oxygen in the blood — have changed the way we care for people with conditions ranging from heart failure to COVID, but they are inaccurate for people with dark skin.

How do these egregious practices go through development and testing to become a part of our lives?

As an industry, healthcare is only scratching the surface of the benefits that digital healthcare solutions can provide. As we leverage new data streams, implement innovative methodologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate actionable insights and automate processes, and use pocket phones to connect with our doctors, we have the opportunity to rethink how we care about people in the digital age is huge.

Digital healthcare solutions can automate routine tasks and empower medical teams, helping to address the current workforce crisis and increase access to high-quality care, especially for those who have traditionally been underserved. Digital innovations can support personalized healthcare approaches, ensuring that every patient has access to the care they need, when they need it. Perhaps most importantly, the digitization of healthcare provides an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how we care for people, moving away from our current care model and actively promoting health through better screening, prevention and early intervention.

The rapid advances in digital health are to be celebrated, but they are outstripping both the laws and regulations that ensure the reliability of healthcare and the ability of the current workforce to recognize potential risks of harm.

Industry leaders are collaborating to advance the ethical, efficient, fair and safe use of digital technologies to reimagine healthcare and improve lives. The digital medicine community promotes scientific progress and broad acceptance of digital medicine to improve public health.

As the wider community embraces the digitalization of healthcare, we have a moral responsibility to create and implement a culture of ethics as we define what it means to care for people in the digital age.

At this point in time, it is extremely important to do it right. Ethical approaches must be applied to the design and implementation of digital solutions, and the responsibility to ensure that these tools and approaches help, not harm, is shared by each of us in this area.

In the absence of such ethical approaches, patients will lose confidence in the most powerful tools our industry has ever seen, squandering the potential to address the most pressing and ongoing problems in our field. The digitalization of healthcare is critical to addressing crises in our current system, from skyrocketing costs to rampant health inequalities, shortages of doctors and terminal illnesses. Digital solutions offer great promise, but only if we develop trustworthy tools and solutions.

That’s why DiMe, along with a visiting faculty comprised of leading experts, researchers, activists, clinicians and technologists from around the world, created the Applied Digital Health Ethics course. This ethics course is for everyone working in the digital health ecosystem. From product designers and developers to clinical operations, engineers to data scientists, manufacturers and executives, every role in the field will learn valuable tactical skills and applications in this course, as well as how to work together to create a culture of ethics. This is the first step towards the success of our industry through building trust.

Click here to access the course and learn more about how to build a more resilient healthcare system that wins the trust of those we are meant to serve.

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texasstandard.news contributed to this report.

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