The ethics of machine learning in medical sciences: Where do we stand today?
Open accessAbstract
Advances in Machine Learning and availability of state-of-the-art computational resources, along with digitized healthcare data, have set the stage for extensive application of artificial intelligence in the realm of diagnosis, prognosis, clinical decision support, personalized treatment options, drug development, and the field of biomedicine. Here, we discuss the application of Machine Learning algorithms in patient healthcare and dermatological domains along with the ethical complexities that are involved. In scientific studies, ethical challenges were initially not addressed proportionally (as assessed by keyword counts in PubMed) and just more recently (since 2016) this has started to improve. Few pioneering countries have created regulatory guidelines around how to respect matters of (1) privacy, (2) fairness, (3) accountability, (4) transparency and (5) conflict of interest when developing novel medical Machine Learning applications. While there is a strong promise of emerging medical applications to ultimately benefit both the patients and the medical practitioners, it is important to raise awareness on the five key ethical issues and incorporate them into medical practice in the near future.
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Ethical considerations are another challenge because AI-based approaches may raise concerns about fairness and bias.
“Another challenge is presented by ethical considerations [42] since AI-based approaches may raise concerns about fairness and bias (see next section) [43].”
From The role of AI in drug discovery: challenges, opportunities, and strategies (2023) · cites this paper as [42]
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- Authors
- Basu, T., Menzer, O., & Engel-Wolf, S.
- Affiliations
- Occidental College (US)
- University of California, Santa Barbara (US)
- Technical University of Munich (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Basu, Treena
- Menzer, Olaf
- ORCID
- Menzer, Olaf
- Venue
- Indian Journal of Dermatology
- Published
- 2020
- Volume
- 65
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 358
- ISSN
- 0019-5154 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7640783
- OpenAlex
- W3048449535
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 1 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 0.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-sa
- Locations
- Indian Journal of Dermatology (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Health Informatics › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare and Education
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Health Information Management › Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare
- Keywords
- machine learning ethics, artificial intelligence in healthcare, dermatology, clinical decision support, privacy, algorithmic fairness, accountability, transparency, conflicts of interest, regulatory guidelines, health data, personalized treatment, drug development
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