Research projects

Working Group: Ethics and Theory of Digitalization in Healthcare

 

  • Digital Bioethics

DFG network “Digital Bioethics”, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), duration 2023-2026, lead by Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Sabine Salloch

Symposium “Digital Bioethics: Methods, Approaches and Ethical Perspectives”, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, duration 2024-2025, lead by Dr. Frank Ursin

The field of digital bioethics has two meanings. On the one hand, we understand it as ethical research on the use of digital technologies in biomedicine, i.e., we investigate the ethical implications of the use of technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and digital health applications in life science research, prevention, screening, diagnostics, therapy and rehabilitation. On the other hand, digital bioethics, in analogy to the digital/computational humanities, means the use of digital methods in bioethical research: digital bioethics uses digital tools and computer-aided methods such as text mining, simulations and AI-supported analyses to create new approaches to ethical issues and expand traditional bioethical approaches. The projects combine an interdisciplinary perspective to promote dialog between ethics, medicine and computer science.

Benzinger L, Epping J, Ursin F, Salloch S (2024): Artificial Intelligence to support ethical decision-making for incapacitated patients: A survey among German anesthesiologists and internists. BMC Medical Ethics 25:78. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-024-01079-z   

Salloch S, Ursin F (2023): The birth of the “digital turn” in bioethics. Bioethics 37(3):285–291. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13099  

Benzinger L, Ursin F, Balke WT, Kacprowski T, Salloch S (2023): Should Artificial Intelligence be used to support clinical ethical decision-making? A systematic review of reasons. BMC Medical Ethics 24: 48. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-023-00929-6  

 

  • My doctor, AI and Me: Artificial intelligence in healthcare from the perspective of citizens and doctors

funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture as part of the “Future Discourses” program “zukunft.niedersachsen”
Duration: 1 October, 2023 to 31 December, 2024

Artificial intelligence is a new player at all levels of healthcare, affecting the relationships and roles of those involved. The encounter between patients and doctors is particularly affected by this. With our future discourse, we are addressing a series of new and previously unresolved questions: Should doctors view diagnostic systems based on artificial intelligence as “colleagues” or as a tool for decision-making? How should patients deal with doctors who disagree with the recommendations of artificial intelligence? What new skills do patients and doctors need when artificial intelligence is involved, and how should patient information and education be designed?
The aim of the project is to develop future concepts for the ethical implementation of artificial intelligence at the communicative micro-level of healthcare, namely in the encounter between patients and doctors. Using specially developed narrative and illustrated case vignettes as a “patient journey” and “physician journey”, a multi-perspective discoursive space is to be opened up. The discourse path leads through four discourse stations in which citizens in their role as potential patients and doctors are introduced to the topic area and discuss the case vignettes as a basis for solution-oriented future concepts. These future concepts are to be incorporated into a “living document” with recommendations for action for the encounter between doctors and patients in the event that artificial intelligence is involved.

Homepage (in German only)

 

  • DESIREE - DEcision Support In Routine and Emergency HEalth Care: Ethical and Social Implications

Joint project funded by the BMBF (Federal Ministery of Education and Research), duration 2020-2023

Homepage

 

  • Levels of explicability for medical artificial intelligence: What do we need and what can we get?

The umbrella term explicability refers to efforts to reduce the black box character of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. These efforts are considered crucial for diagnostic AI applications because there are tradeoffs between accuracy and opacity. The centrality of explicability invites to reflect on the ethical requirements for diagnostic AI systems. These requirements originate from the fiduciary doctor-patient-relationship and contain aspects of informed consent. The aim of the project is to determine the levels of explicability required for ethically defensible informed consent processes and how they can technically be met by developers of medical AI.

Ursin F, Lindner F, Ropinski T, Salloch S, Timmermann C (2023): Levels of explicability for medical artificial intelligence: What do we normatively need and what can we technically reach? Ethik in der Medizin 35:173-199. doi: 10.1007/s00481-023-00761-x

 

  • The false Dichotomy of Competition and Cooperation: How Artificial Intelligence will shape the new Role of Radiologists

The debate about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the role of radiologists created identity-threatening fears of to be replaced by machines. Radiologists replied that there would only be an augmentation of the radiological workflow by AI. The project will extract, synthesize, and analyze the ethical implications for professionalism of the arguments against the hypothesis that AI systems will replace radiologists.

Ursin F, Fürholzer K, Salloch S (2025): Metaphors in Digital Radiology: Ethical Implications for responsibility assignments of Human-AI Imaginaries. AI & Society (accepted).

 

  • Hologram techniques for Digital Surgery: An Analysis of Ethical Issues of intraoperatively applied Mixed and Augmented Reality Technologies

Head-mounted displays that superimpose holograms onto patients are of particular surgical interest, as they are believed to dramatically change surgical standards and techniques in the future. The project will explore and analyze the ethical issues of newly introduced mixed and augmented reality technologies in surgical intervention in the operating room.

Frank Ursin, Cristian Timmermann, Lasse Benzinger, Sabine Salloch, Fabian-Alexander Tietze (2024): Intraoperative application of mixed and augmented reality for digital surgery: A systematic review of ethical issues. In: Frontiers in Surgery 11. doi:10.3389/fsurg.2024.1287218