Patient Consent

What does patient consent, autonomy, and trust mean when AI is involved in the delivery of care?

In American Journal of Bioethics (Mar 2025), Y. Tony Yang’s commentary “Beyond Disclosure: Rethinking Patient Consent and AI Accountability in Healthcare” challenges the idea that simply telling patients “AI might be involved” is enough.
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Yang urges us to unpack what “Right to Notice and Explanation” means and to move beyond disclosure. It’s more than informing the patient that AI is used, it also includes:

1. Ensuring true patient understanding through opportunities to ask questions and seek clarification.
2. Identifying accountability by requiring that an AI system’s logic and functionality be documented and subject to audit.
3. Embedding explainability and trust at the core of AI-informed care through implementing ethical frameworks that emphasize fairness, transparency, and trustworthiness.

As the digital transformation of medicine speeds forward, our consent frameworks must be updated to reflect how the technology is being operationalized, while also considering how to minimize the disruption to current workflows and delivery of care.

Question for the network: How have you seen healthcare providers incorporate, or fail to incorporate, meaningful AI explanations into patient conversations?

Yang, Y. T. (2025). Beyond Disclosure: Rethinking Patient Consent and AI Accountability in Healthcare. The American Journal of Bioethics, 25(3), 151–153. https://lnkd.in/gq2kccuU