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Machine Medical Ethics pp 49–65Cite as

Implementation Fundamentals for Ethical Medical Agents

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Part of the book series: Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering ((ISCA,volume 74))

Abstract

Implementation of ethics in medical machinery is, necessarily, as machine-dependent as ethics is context-dependent. Fortunately, as with ethics, there are broad implementation guidelines that, if followed, can keep one out of trouble. In particular, ensuring correct codification and documentation of the processes and procedures by which each decision is reached is likely, in the longer view, even more important than the individual decisions themselves. All ethical machines must not only have ethical decision-making rules but also methods to collect data, information and knowledge to feed to those rules; codified methods to determine the source, quality and accuracy of that input; trustworthy methods to recognize anomalous conditions requiring expert human intervention and simple methods to get all of this into the necessary hands in a timely fashion. The key to successful implementation of ethics is determining how best to fulfill these requirements within the limitations of the specific machine.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Digital Wisdom Institute, Vienna, VA, USA

    Mark R. Waser

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  1. Mark R. Waser
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Correspondence to Mark R. Waser .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Institute of Humanities in Medicine, Taipei Medical University, University of Tasmania, Dept of philosophy, Schl of Humanities, Taipei City, Taiwan

    Simon Peter van Rysewyk

  2. The Centre for Advanced Media Research, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Matthijs Pontier

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Waser, M.R. (2015). Implementation Fundamentals for Ethical Medical Agents. In: van Rysewyk, S., Pontier, M. (eds) Machine Medical Ethics. Intelligent Systems, Control and Automation: Science and Engineering, vol 74. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08108-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08108-3_4

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