Main description:

The essays in this book, written by researchers from both humanities and science, describe various theoretical and experimental approaches to adding medical ethics to a machine, what design features are necessary in order to achieve this, philosophical and practical questions concerning justice, rights, decision-making and responsibility in medical contexts, and accurately modeling essential physician-machine-patient relationships.

In medical settings, machines are in close proximity with human beings: with patients who are in vulnerable states of health, who have disabilities of various kinds, with the very young or very old and with medical professionals. Machines in these contexts are undertaking important medical tasks that require emotional sensitivity, knowledge of medical codes, human dignity and privacy.

As machine technology advances, ethical concerns become more urgent: should medical machines be programmed to follow a code of medical ethics? What theory or theories should constrain medical machine conduct? What design features are required? Should machines share responsibility with humans for the ethical consequences of medical actions? How ought clinical relationships involving machines to be modeled? Is a capacity for empathy and emotion detection necessary? What about consciousness?

This collection is the first book that addresses these 21st-century concerns.

Contents:

Preface

Part I Theoretical Foundations of Machine Medical Ethics

An Overview of Machine Medical Ethics

Surgical, Therapeutic, Nursing and Sex Robots in Machine and Information Ethics

Good Healthcare Is in the "How": The Quality of Care, the Role of Machines, and the Need for New Skills

Implementation Fundamentals for Ethical Medical Agents

Towards a Principle-Based Healthcare Agent

Do Machines Have Prima Facie Duties?

A Hybrid Bottom-Up and Top-Down Approach to Machine Medical Ethics: Theory and Data

Moral Ecology Approaches to Machine Ethics

Part II Contemporary Challenges in Machine Medical Ethics: Justice, Rights and the Law

Opportunity Costs: Scarcity and Complex Medical Machines

The Rights of Machines: Caring for Robotic Care-Givers

Machine Medical Ethics and Robot Law: Legal Necessity or Science Fiction?

Part III Contemporary Challenges in Machine Medical Ethics: Decision-Making, Responsibility and Care

Having the Final Say: Machine Support of Ethical Decisions of Doctors

Ethics of Robotic Assisted Dying

Automating Medicine the Ethical Way

Machine Medical Ethics: When a Human Is Delusive but the Machine Has Its Wits About Him

Part IV Contemporary Challenges in Machine Medical Ethics: Medical Machine Technologies and Models

ELIZA Fifty Years Later: An Automatic Therapist Using Bottom-Up and Top-Down Approaches

Models of the Patient-Machine-Clinician Relationship in Closed-Loop Machine Neuromodulation

Modelling Consciousness-Dependent Expertise in Machine Medical Moral Agents

Emotion and Disposition Detection in Medical Machines: Chances and Challenges

Ethical and Technical Aspects of Emotions to Create Empathy in Medical Machines

Epilogue