Artificial intelligence (AI) software can minimize the work demands of certain professions. By taking over time-consuming, repetitive tasks, AI programs can free up professionals to focus on more important work.
Using AI software to analyze diagnostic tests, ranging from genetic sequencing reports to image test results while looking for warning signs of cancer, can expedite the diagnostic process and allow medical professionals, including radiologists, to speed up the turnaround time on diagnostic work.
Unfortunately, reliance on AI for diagnostic analysis could lead to mistakes or oversights. AI software may fail to accurately diagnose conditions that a human doctor could readily identify.
Who is liable in cases where AI software used by a physician results in a delayed diagnosis, a failure to diagnose a patient or a misdiagnosis?
Professionals have an obligation to patients
There are a host of different tools that modern physicians and hospitals can use to improve care standards and make better use of limited resources. AI can certainly assist with diagnostic analysis. But medical professionals should not fully outsource one of their most important job functions to software without oversight.
They still have an obligation to their patients to review information carefully and to ensure that the diagnostic conclusion reached by AI software is appropriate. AI screening can supplement direct screening by medical professionals. It should not replace the review of a licensed physician or radiologist when looking at test results or images.
While people might assume that corporate negligence from a software company is to blame for AI diagnosis errors, the physician who used the software may also be liable. Doctors are technically the professionals with the duty of care to patients, and they cannot outsource that duty to a third-party software company.
However, many doctors are actually employees at the hospitals where they work. Their employment status may make the business liable for any professional negligence they commit while working. Vicarious liability rules pass financial and legal responsibility for worker errors to employers. Additionally, medical businesses may be liable for choosing buggy or brand-new AI systems.
Software companies generally are not liable for the misuse of the programs that they release, especially in a medical scenario where care providers have a legal and ethical duty to ensure a reasonable standard of care for their patients. AI is only a tool, and the doctor is the one subject to professional care standards.
In scenarios where over-reliance on or misuse of AI software results in a preventable diagnostic error, affected patients or their surviving family members may have grounds for a medical malpractice lawsuit. To hold physicians and employers accountable for AI-related negligence, patients and their legal counsel must review the initial diagnostic report, subsequent accurate diagnostics, and specific details about the AI software employed