A/Prof. Melissa Mccradden1
1Australian Institute For Machine Learning, Adelaide, Australia
Biography:
Dr. Melissa McCradden is the Women's and Children's Health Network Artificial Intelligence Director and The Hospital Research Foundation (THRF) Group Clinical Research Fellow in Ethics of AI at the Australian Institute for Machine Learning at the University of Adelaide. She is an Adjunct Scientist with the SickKids Research Institute and an Associate Editor for the journal Resarch Ethics.
Abstract:
As efforts are underway to integrate artificial intelligence (AI)-based systems into healthcare, a core question remains: how should we decide what evidence is sufficient to justify integration into clinical care workflows, and how?
Historically, equipoise has served an important role in determining the ethical justifiability of advancing knowledge through clinical trials while balancing duty of care to patients. Theories of equipoise have been refined over time to adapt to changes in clinical research; now, we should consider its application to advancement of AI tools in healthcare.
This presentation will elaborate on the role of clinical equipoise with respect to (a) how equipoise applies to efforts to translate AI tools into clinical systems, (b) how to situate the role of equipoise in decisions about whether a trial should be conducted, (c) the role of the community of experts in determining whether and when equipoise obtains, (d) what sort of evidence standards should be met to reliably contribute to the determination of equipoise. These considerations can have practical implications for AI researchers and senior decision-makers by providing an empirical warrant for integration-related decisions and promote consistency in how AI tools are integrated across organizations.