Ethics Computing and Medicine: Informatics and the Transformation Heal

New technology always raises compelling ethical questions. As those in medicine increasingly depend on computers and other intelligent machines, the intersection of ethics, computing and the health professions grows much more complex and significant. This book attempts systematically to identify and address the full range of ethical issues that arise when intelligent machines are used in medicine, nursing, psychology, and allied health professions. It maps and explores a variety of important issues and controversies, including ethics and evaluation in computational medicine, patient and provider confidentiality, responsibility for use of computers in medicine, appropriate use of decision support systems, outcomes of research and computational prognosis (including mortality predictions), and computer-based biomedical research - especially meta-analysis. This book is accessible to participants in the fields of bioethics and medical informatics. It is appropriate for physicians, nurses, administrators, ethicists, health attorneys, advanced undergraduates and graduate students.

• First and only book on this topic • Contributors are leading authorities • Accessible to diverse audiences despite complex issues

Contents

Preface; List of contributors; 1. Bioethics and health informatics: an introduction Kenneth W. Goodman; 2. Medical informatics and human values Terrell Ward Bynum and John L. Fodor; 3. Responsibility for computer-based decisions in health care John W. Snapper; 4. Evaluating medical information systems: social contexts and ethical challenges James G. Anderson and Carolyn E. Aydin; 5. Health care information: access, confidentiality and good practice Sheri Alpert; 6. Ethical challenges in the use of decision-support software in clinical practice Randolph A. Miller and Kenneth W. Goodman; 7. Outcomes, futility, and health policy research Kenneth W. Goodman; 8. Meta-analysis: conceptual, ethical, and policy issues Kenneth W. Goodman.

Reviews

‘Ethics, Computing and Medicine covers comprehensively the intersection of these three substantial topics and that is no small task … The important issues are presented clearly, with little detail that might be baffling to the non-expert … Nowhere else have I encountered such an accessible summary of this increasingly important area.’ Sarah McGhee, Hong Kong University

‘Goodman’s book provides a comprehensive survey of ethical and conceptual issues associated with the manifold use of information technology in health care that can be recommended for health care professionals, professionals in health policy and management and scholars in the fields of biomedical research, bioethics and medical informatics.’ Zentrum für Ethik in den Wissenschaften

Contributors

Kenneth W. Goodman, Terrell Ward Bynum, John L. Fodor, John W. Snapper, James G. Anderson, Carolyn E. Aydin, Sheri Alpert, Randolph A. Miller