Avoiding Bias

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:01 — 1.4MB)

Subscribe: RSS

October 24, 2019

Anchor lead: Clinicians must be on the lookout for bias as they’re developing artificial intelligence systems in medicine, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Bias may be described as an individual’s unique way of looking at things, that may lead to one conclusion over another. In medicine this can give rise to different ways of looking at data and then in managing specific patients, shown in a recent study. Paul Rothman, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, says bias must be identified as computers are utilized more in health care.

Rothman: Since we already have those biases and disparities in our system it is not surprising that as we teach computers the way we care for patients today that those same biases are going to be baked in to the paradigms the computers come up with. It’s really important at this point in time where we’re just beginning this journey on how computers can assist in the care of our patients that we carefully look at the biases that come out of these machine learning paradigms.  :30

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.