Question

Describe in your own word the three primary ethical issues in CDSS: (1) care standards; (2) appropriate use and users; and (3) professional relationships.

Answer 1

Ans) Clinicians, philosophers, lawyers, and policy makers have grappled for more
than a decade with social, ethical, and legal issues raised by the growth of health informatics, perhaps especially by progress in development of tools for clinical decision support. What has emerged is a recognition that future scientific growth must be guided by corresponding attention to ethical
issues.

- These issues address the role of: error avoidance and standards; appropriate use and users; and professional relationships. Scientific programs and publications may be regarded as duty-bound to foster environments in which further attention to ethical, legal, and social issues is encouraged. Indeed, to the extent that morality guides the law, vigorous programs to identify and debate ethical issues will be of no small service to society as legislatures, courts, and government regulators and policy makers
attempt to apply the insights of ethics to practical problems in health informatics.
More research on ethical issues involved in use of CDSS is essential for this process.

- We have, for instance, only begun to address issues that arise when diagnostic tools are made available on the World Wide Web. We are
in no way clear about the level of ethics education that is appropriate for students in health informatics, and there is much work to be done at the intersections of ethics and system evaluation, and of ethics and standards
of care.
- Elsewhere in the history of science and technology, such challenges are often taken to constitute evidence of the growth and maturation of an applied science.This is no less true for clinical decision support systems and,
indeed, for all of health informatics.