Medical Technology Ethical Dilemmas

The article Medical Technology and Ethical Issues, written by Thompson and Hickey, was written about the ethical issues involved with technology giving data for doctors to use in their making a decision. There is a machine called RIP that automatically calculates the percent chance of whether or not someone will live from their condition, as well as recommendations on what treatments the patient would need. The article gives a striking example about when a patient has a ninety-five percent chance of death, the machine will not recommend treatment. Now if the patient’s chances of living are greater than five percent, the machine will recommend treatment. I like the use of the RIP machine and how much it can help medical personal make quick decisions, but I do not like the fact that in some instances the machine has a five percent margin of error in recommendations of treatment. The RIP machine is a computer program that when data is inputted about a patient’s medical condition; it gives feedback on whether the patient needs life-saving treatment or is likely to die. This machine can improve the efficiency and the rate of patient’s lives being saved. The computer program makes recommendations for treatment within milliseconds, those milliseconds can be crucial in saving someone’s life, time, …show more content…
The doctor, or medical staff, is also liable to a margin of error too. The medical staff is human. When they are in lack of sleep or food, their actions and decision making are impaired; stress levels cause their actions and decision making to be impaired as well. The RIP machine does not posses human traits as such as those, but any margin of error in it-self is bad. Nothing in this world is perfect, but when lives are on the line there is no room for error. I think that the possible errors are a big deal in the medical field and should be looked into to decrease the margin of