RESUMEN
Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) is predicted to be a solution for improving healthcare, increasing efficiency, and saving time and recourses. A lack of ethical principles for the use of AI in practice has been highlighted by several stakeholders due to the recent attention given to it. Research has shown an urgent need for more knowledge regarding the ethical implications of AI applications in healthcare. However, fundamental ethical principles may not be sufficient to describe ethical concerns associated with implementing AI applications. Objective: The aim of this study is twofold, (1) to use the implementation of AI applications to predict patient mortality in emergency departments as a setting to explore healthcare professionals' perspectives on ethical issues in relation to ethical principles and (2) to develop a model to guide ethical considerations in AI implementation in healthcare based on ethical theory. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 participants. The abductive approach used to analyze the empirical data consisted of four steps alternating between inductive and deductive analyses. Results: Our findings provide an ethical model demonstrating the need to address six ethical principles (autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, justice, explicability, and professional governance) in relation to ethical theories defined as virtue, deontology, and consequentialism when AI applications are to be implemented in clinical practice. Conclusions: Ethical aspects of AI applications are broader than the prima facie principles of medical ethics and the principle of explicability. Ethical aspects thus need to be viewed from a broader perspective to cover different situations that healthcare professionals, in general, and physicians, in particular, may face when using AI applications in clinical practice.
RESUMEN
Artificial intelligence (AI) is predicted to improve health care, increase efficiency and save time and recourses, especially in the context of emergency care where many critical decisions are made. Research shows the urgent need to develop principles and guidance to ensure ethical AI use in healthcare. This study aimed to explore healthcare professionals' perceptions of the ethical aspects of implementing an AI application to predict the mortality risk of patients in emergency departments. The analysis used an abductive qualitative content analysis based on the principles of medical ethics (autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice), the principle of explicability, and the new principle of professional governance, that emerged from the analysis. In the analysis, two conflicts and/or considerations emerged tied to each ethical principle elucidating healthcare professionals' perceptions of the ethical aspects of implementing the AI application in emergency departments. The results were related to aspects of sharing information from the AI application, resources versus demands, providing equal care, using AI as a support system, trustworthiness to AI, AI-based knowledge, professional knowledge versus AI-based information, and conflict of interests in the healthcare system.