What happened when a ‘wildly irrational’ #algorithm made crucial #healthcare decisions | US news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/02/algorithm-crucial-healthcare-decisions
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L’insupportable excuse de l’algorithme qui ne fait jamais qu’en fonction de sa programmation.
In Washington DC, “on the worst end, we’ve had clients who actually died, because their services were cut and they were not receiving the care that they needed” Tina Smith Nelson, supervising attorney with AARP Legal Counsel for the Elderly, said about the effects of a new algorithmic system introduced in 2018. Over 300 seniors have had to file administrative appeals after their home care was cut by a new algorithmic system.
“I think as a society we move into unsettling territory when we rely solely upon algorithms and data to make determinations about health care needs,” Nelson said. “We reduce a person’s humanity to a number.”
Kevin De Liban, an attorney with Legal Aid of Arkansas, began fighting the cuts after severely disabled patients started calling “en masse” in 2016. “The human suffering was just immense,” he said. “You had people lying in their own waste. You had people getting bed sores because there’s nobody there to turn them. You had people being shut in, you had people skipping meals. It was just incalculable human suffering.”