An Ethically Supported Framework for Determining Patient Notification and Informed Consent Practices When Using Artificial Intelligence in Health Care

Summary: Proposes an ethical framework for when and how patients must be notified and give informed consent for AI use in their care.

Relevance: Fits Health & Care and Ethics & Environment: offers a concrete decision framework for when clients must be told an AI is involved in their care, directly usable by social workers in integrated health settings weighing disclosure obligations around AI-assisted diagnosis or triage tools.

Key findings: The framework scores AI use across five factors — model autonomy, departure from standard of care, patient-facing/chatbot interaction, clinical risk level, and administrative burden — sorting each case into one of three outcomes: no notification, notification only, or full informed consent. The authors frame it explicitly as “a starting point for creating consensus on standards,” not a legal standard, noting scoring “is not a replacement for regular attention to ethical reasoning.”

Read the original: https://journal.chestnet.org/article/S0012-3692(24)00633-0/fulltext