Cold Comfort

Professor Glenn Cohen, Faculty Director of the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School interviews Dr. Rochelle Walensky, 19th Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Senior Academic Fellow at the Petrie-Flom Center. They discuss Dr. Walensky’s career as an infectious disease clinician focused on HIV/AIDS, her experience leading the CDC during COVID-19, and her reflections on public health infrastructure in the United States and internationally.

Should Social Robots be Used to Provide Emotional Support? PARO is a cuddly baby seal used as an emotional companion robot in elder care. Emotional companion robots provide some of the benefits of therapy animals, without the attendant challenges of a live animal. But while emotional companion robots can provide comfort to older adults, they might also provide a way out for human caretakers. Beyond the question of substitution, ethical concerns about the potentially deceptive nature of emotional companion robots make PARO the adorable seal into something a bit less cuddly and a bit more ethically challenging. This episode will untangle the dilemma posed by social robots. Cynthia Chauhan (a patient advocate and two-time cancer survivor) will share her experience using one; Ari Waldman (an authority on the nexus of law and technology) will discuss the issues that arise when animatronics replace human caretakers. Created with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

How Should We Regulate Digital Health Technology? The current digital health marketplace has been described as a wild west. Every day, consumer products making strong claims are brought to market without sufficient evidence and often withdrawn only when enforcement actions are brought against them.  There are already apps that claim to detect melanomas, treat ADHD, and improve vision. This episode delves into the exploding world of digital health apps. Are they safe? What happens when they make false claims? And how should we regulate them? Cynthia Chauhan (a patient advocate) shares what patients want from these apps; Anand Shah (a former deputy FDA commissioner) and Nic Terry (an expert in the intersection of health, law, and technology) shed light on the fast-shifting regulatory landscape. Created with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

How AI Bias Is Affecting Health Care—And What We Can Do About It People are biased, and people build AI, so AI are biased, too. When AI is used in hospitals to treat patients, that bias comes to health care.  For example, a 2019 paper in Science found that a commercial risk-prediction tool was less likely to refer equally sick Black people than white people to receive extra care resources. In fact, only 17.7% of patients that the algorithm assigned to get extra care were Black, but, if the algorithm were unbiased, the percentage would be much higher—46.5%. This episode will look at how the racial disparities baked into the health care system also make their way into the AI that the health care system uses, creating a vicious cycle. Nic Terry (an expert in the intersection of health, law, and technology) and Ravi Parikh (a practicing oncologist and bioethicist) will discuss legal and ethical concerns. Michael Abramoff (an ophthalmologist, AI pioneer, and entrepreneur) will share how he’s trying to build a fairer AI Created with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

How secure is data collected by digital pills? Ingestible electronic sensors (IESs or “digital pills”) can be taken with or as a part of a drug in order to collect and record patient data, such as medication adherence or physiological metrics. This information can then be shared with relevant parties, including the patient, family members, and health care providers. This episode will address the complex legal, ethical, and legislative issues raised by digital pills. Cynthia Chauhan (a patient advocate and two-time cancer survivor) will share her experience using an implantable sensor, and Ari Waldman (an authority on the nexus of law and technology) will describe the challenges for security, privacy, and ethics. Created with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

Who Is Liable When AI Injures a Patient? Medical errors happen; doctors are only human. And when doctors make mistakes, the law pertaining to who is liable is usually clear-cut. But what happens if the mistake was made by an AI, included one embedded in a device or a robot?  This episode will explore who is liable. Is it the hospital? The developer of the AI? The doctor on the scene? And what legal recourse do patients have? Nic Terry (an expert in the intersection of health, law, and technology), Michael Abramoff (an ophthalmologist, AI pioneer, and entrepreneur), and Ravi Parikh (a practicing oncologist and bioethicist) will attempt to answer these questions and others. Created with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

Do You Own Your Personal Health Data? Every time you visit the doctor, heaps of personal health data are stored in electronic medical records, a mainstay of the modern health care industry. The rise of big data in healthcare comes with risks, however. Health data is now being sold to external companies and researchers. So, can you own your personal medical data? In this episode, Anand Shah (a former deputy FDA commissioner), Michael Abramoff (an ophthalmologist, AI pioneer, and entrepreneur), Cynthia Chauhan (a patient advocate), and Ari Waldman (an authority on the nexus of law and technology) offer perspectives and explain why this issue is more complicated than it seems. Created with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Cammann Fund at Harvard University.

Should We Tell Patients When AI is Being Used in Their Care? Increasingly, AI is being used in hospitals without patients’ knowledge of its use in their care, let alone their consent. For example, AI is being used to predict the likelihood that a cancer patient will die within the next six months. Hospitals and clinicians are deploying this technology, in large part, without disclosing to patients that it is being used. But the AI may be unproven and prone to bias. This episode will delve into the issues around the technologies themselves – do they work? How autonomous are they? – as well as the thorny questions that arise as they infiltrate the world of patient care – do some of these systems make patients unwitting research subjects? Does the use of AI erode patients’ trust in doctors? Ravi Parikh (a practicing oncologist and bioethicist) and Cynthia Chauhan (a patient advocate) offer two viewpoints, while Nic Terry (an expert in the intersection of health, law, and technology) predicts what legal challenges lay ahead. Created with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Cammann Fund at Harvard University.