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. 2025 Nov 9.
doi: 10.1007/s10730-025-09567-4. Online ahead of print.

Responsible Decision Making for AI in Healthcare: Exploring the Role of Ethics Consultants at the Intersection of Ethics and AI

Michael McCarthy  1
Affiliations

Responsible Decision Making for AI in Healthcare: Exploring the Role of Ethics Consultants at the Intersection of Ethics and AI

Michael McCarthy. HEC Forum. .

Abstract

Healthcare Ethics Consultants (HECs) can serve as a resource for facilitating values-based conversations for responsible integration of AI technologies that benefit patients, providers, and healthcare organizations. First, the paper describes the different types of AI and its uses in healthcare. Second, it considers the role of HECs and why facilitating conversations around the responsible use and implementation of AI better frames the ethical content for AI healthcare. Third, the paper explores the ethical knowledge necessary to think through responsible use of AI. Finally, it identifies how ethics can be embedded into the process of adopting AI in healthcare from its development to its implementation in the organization and in the need for continual research on its use. The skills necessary for HECs can be utilized in a way to better improve values-based decision-making and evaluation for AI in healthcare.

Keywords: AI ethics; Artificial intelligence; Clinical ethics; Healthcare delivery; Healthcare ethics consultant; Organizational ethics.

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