Today, the position of doctors and healthcare professionals is rapidly and radically changing due to a complex change in the structure and functioning of healthcare systems.
Gradually, what once was a free profession, where doctors made decisions about patients freely according to their best knowledge and conscience, is becoming a profession dependent on various institutions and their regulations and limits. Due to these regulations and limits, doctors and healthcare professionals are often pressured and forced into decisions that are contrary to their ethical and moral principles.
Until the mid-20 th century, the medical profession was a free profession, allowing doctors to make independent decisions regarding the diagnosis and treatment of individual patients. It was a direct, non-anonymous doctor-patient relationship in all aspects. Doctors were expected to follow a specific ethical approach, as defined, for example, in the Hippocratic Oath. These ethical principles were also defined in the health legislation.”
Now, the medical profession is more and more dependent on decisions of different institutions of health care systems – health insurance companies, verious offices and health “control” institutions, …etc. They allow or not allow, what can be payed or not payed for ill patient, what can be do ( which art of operation, transplantation, which medicament, which treatment and so on) – but very often only from financial point of view , or from another point of view, without ethical principles.
And today more and more of these decisions (these are anonymous decisions of different institutiones in health care systems) are providing by AI (Artificial Inteligence) – without personally contact with ill people, with doctors, without elementary ethics: anonymous administrative decision !
The criteria for these decisions are mostly only financial ( under the idea of “quality of life” aspect, “productivity”, interest for the society, ..etc. ) – they are using such concrete algoritmus, such software.
Already are existing some “medical” AI decisionmaker systems, which have such algoritmus, which have als result in some medical cases the “treatment recommendation” the euthanasia or asisted suicide.And such “treatment recommendation” should be payed by health insurance system.
I think, that would be necessary to inform still more our colleagues and people active in the politics, about using the AI, not only in the direct work of doctors with patients (diagnostics, evaluation of findings, evaluation of examinations), but also in healthcare systems administrative work – where it means for the patient very often the decision ” life or death “ – without any ethical point of view!!!
Dr Andrej Hradocky
