Can AI be Used to Find Causation in Malpractice?

Nowadays, AI is everyone. We hear about it on social media and the news, and a lot of the time it is being used without us even knowing it’s there, especially on our phones. AI is an extremely useful tool, and is starting to become commonplace in the medical field. With all its uses, can it be used to find out how some sort of medical malpractice was caused?

According to the National Library of Medicine, “Medical malpractice occurs when a healthcare provider deviates from the accepted standard of care and causes harm to a patient.” Finding the how the malpractice happened, or the causation, is important to figure out so that it is known that it is the provider’s fault that the patient was harmed. Finding causation is difficult because there are many factors that go into malpractice and there are many large data sets that cost time and money to analyze.

This is where AI can come in and help. AI can quickly analyze large medical records and literature to find out things that are related to the malpractice. It can review archives of similar cases that could show why or how something happened. AI can even be used beforehand by physicians to help correctly diagnose patients to prevent any malpractice from happening in the first place.

However, there are some drawbacks. While AI is good at proving things that relate to the case, correlation does not mean causation. Most of the time, any correlation is too complex for AI to accurately determine if it is also causation and has to be analyzed by humans. While AI can find the correct laws and regulations for the case, but its rationality can be unreliable and has to be verified by a human expert.

While AI can sometimes find the causation of medical malpractice, other times it can be wrong and give wrong information. As AI is becoming more integrated into our lives, it is extremely important to use AI responsibly, especially in the medical field. The question isn’t whether or not we can make AI find causation in malpractice, it’s whether we should.

Citations

Terranova, Claudio et al. “AI and professional liability assessment in healthcare. A revolution in legal medicine?.” Frontiers in medicine vol. 10 1337335. 8 Jan. 2024, doi:10.3389/fmed.2023.1337335

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10800912

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *