AI and Ethical Decision-Making in a Resource-Limited Health Care Environment


Project dates (estimated):

October 2020 – September 2024


Name of the PhD student:

Jamie Webb


Supervisors

Ewen Harrison - Usher Institute (Centre for Medical Informatics)
Sarah Cunningham Burley - Usher Institute (Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society)
Michael Gill – Head of Philosophy (School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences)


Project aims:

This project aims to synthesise philosophical bioethics and public deliberative processes, to arrive at recommendations for the ethical use of AI in healthcare resource allocation.  


Disciplines and subfields engaged:

  • Philosophical bioethics

  • Health care/medicine

  • Deliberative democracy studies

  • AI Ethics 


Research themes:

  • Ethics of Algorithms

    • Algorithmic Transparency and Explainability

    • Ethics of Algorithmic Decision-Making

  • Emerging Technology, Health and Flourishing

    • Emerging Tech and Democratic Flourishing


Related outputs:

  • Invited talk: Distributive justice, machine learning and healthcare resource allocation. Medical Informatics Research Group, University of Edinburgh. Seminar series, 15th February 2024.

  • Invited talk: Trust, machine learning and healthcare resource allocation. ‘Ethics of AI in healthcare’ conference, Newcastle University, 8th September 2023.

  • How citizens could help government with emergency decisions in the next pandemic. The Conversation. 2023. 🔗

  • Healthcare resource allocation, machine learning, and distributive justice. American Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming)

  • Co-organised the Postgraduate Bioethics Conference 2023 with Emma Nance at The University of Edinburgh, June 2023 🔗

  • Deliberative facilitator, IPSOS Scotland and Scottish Government Citizens Jury on data sharing in the public sector, 2022-23.

  • Where is the public in pandemic public policy?, Webb J, Manku K. (forthcoming) in Pandemic and Beyond Volume 4 - Law and Ethics. Ed. Redhead, C. Manchester University Press.

  • ​Is mpox an STI? The societal aspects and healthcare implications of a key question [version 2; peer review: 2 approved]. Garcia Iglesias J, Nagington M, Pickersgill M et al. Wellcome Open Res 2023, 7:252 🔗

  • Artificial moral advisors: A new perspective from moral psychology, Yuxin Liu, Adam B. Moore, Jamie Webb and Shannon Vallor AIES ’22: Proceedings of the 2022 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, 2022 🔗

  • Ethical analysis of Conservative MPs’ opposition to covid-19 certification, Jamie Webb UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator. December 21st 2021 🔗

  • Pandemic Public Engagement: An Ethical Analysis, Jamie Webb, UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator 2021 🔗

  • Siblings and Discordant Eligibility for Gene Therapy Research: Considering Parental Requests for Non-Trial “Compassionate Use”, Jamie Webb, Lesha D. Shah and Alison Bateman-House, Clinical Ethics 16(4), 2021 🔗

  • Living and dying with covid: resolving the hard questions of living with covid-19 – the need for public deliberation, Jamie Webb, Hugh Whitall, Pandemic Ethics Accelerator, 2021 🔗

  • When it Comes to Covid Vaccination, the Terminally Ill Shouldn’t Be Forgotten — They Should Be Prioritized, Jamie Webb, Medium, 2021 🔗

  • The Moderna Vaccine Story is a Cautionary Tale for Coronavirus Reporting, Jamie Webb, Bioethics Today, 2020 🔗

  • Ethically Allocating COVID-19 Drugs via Pre-approval Access and Emergency Use Authorization, Jamie Webb, Lesha D. Shah and Holly Fernandez Lynch, The American Journal of Bioethics 20(9), 2020 🔗

  • It’s time to make ClinicalTrials.gov a better tool for patients. Here’s how., Jamie Webb, STAT, 2020 🔗

  • No Easy Answers in Allocating Unapproved COVID-19 Drugs Outside Clinical Trials, Jamie Webb, Lesha Shah and Holly Fernandez Lynch, The American Journal of Bioethics 20(9), 2020 🔗

  • Putting placebo-controlled trials in developing countries to the interpersonal justifiability test, Jamie Webb, Developing World Bioethics 19(3), 2018 🔗