Cited by 191Ethics and Social Impacts of AIArtificial Intelligence in Healthcare and EducationMachine Learning in Healthcare

Evaluation and Mitigation of Racial Bias in Clinical Machine Learning Models: Scoping Review

Open access
Huang, Jonathan, Galal, Galal, Etemadi, Mozziyar, Vaidyanathan, Mahesh·2022·JMIR Medical Informatics

Published version of a preprint

Abstract

Background: Racial bias is a key concern regarding the development, validation, and implementation of machine learning (ML) models in clinical settings. Despite the potential of bias to propagate health disparities, racial bias in clinical ML has yet to be thoroughly examined and best practices for bias mitigation remain unclear. Objective: Our objective was to perform a scoping review to characterize the methods by which the racial bias of ML has been assessed and describe strategies that may be used to enhance algorithmic fairness in clinical ML. Methods: A scoping review was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) Extension for Scoping Reviews. A literature search using PubMed, Scopus, and Embase databases, as well as Google Scholar, identified 635 records, of which 12 studies were included. Results: Applications of ML were varied and involved diagnosis, outcome prediction, and clinical score prediction performed on data sets including images, diagnostic studies, clinical text, and clinical variables. Of the 12 studies, 1 (8%) described a model in routine clinical use, 2 (17%) examined prospectively validated clinical models, and the remaining 9 (75%) described internally validated models. In addition, 8 (67%) studies concluded that racial bias was present, 2 (17%) concluded that it was not, and 2 (17%) assessed the implementation of bias mitigation strategies without comparison to a baseline model. Fairness metrics used to assess algorithmic racial bias were inconsistent. The most commonly observed metrics were equal opportunity difference (5/12, 42%), accuracy (4/12, 25%), and disparate impact (2/12, 17%). All 8 (67%) studies that implemented methods for mitigation of racial bias successfully increased fairness, as measured by the authors’ chosen metrics. Preprocessing methods of bias mitigation were most commonly used across all studies that implemented them. Conclusions: The broad scope of medical ML applications and potential patient harms demand an increased emphasis on evaluation and mitigation of racial bias in clinical ML. However, the adoption of algorithmic fairness principles in medicine remains inconsistent and is limited by poor data availability and ML model reporting. We recommend that researchers and journal editors emphasize standardized reporting and data availability in medical ML studies to improve transparency and facilitate evaluation for racial bias.

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  • There is limited evidence on whether long-term health monitoring using wearable devices will yield reliable and equitable real-world data across the diverse socioeconomic and demographic population spectrum, particularly among racial and ethnic minority groups.

    “There is limited evidence on whether long-term health monitoring using wearable devices will yield reliable and equitable real-world data18 across the diverse socioeconomic and demographic19,20 population spectrum,21,22 particularly among racial and ethnic minority groups.23”

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Authors
Huang, J., Galal, G., Etemadi, M., & Vaidyanathan, M.
Affiliations
Northwestern University (US)
Corresponding author
Galal, Galal
Venue
JMIR Medical Informatics
Published
2022-05-31
Volume
10
Issue
5
Pages
e36388
ISSN
2291-9694 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W4220718380
Cited by
186
References
63
Citations by year
2026: 35 · 2025: 60 · 2024: 51 · 2023: 37 · 2022: 3
FWCI
7.20
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • JMIR Medical Informatics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Machine Learning in Healthcare
Keywords
racial bias, algorithmic fairness, machine learning in healthcare, bias mitigation, algorithmic discrimination, health disparities, fairness metrics, equal opportunity difference, indirect discrimination, clinical prediction model

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