🔎 New STAT Investigation - How race became ubiquitous in medical decision-making tools

This 7 part series uncovers the struggle over removing race from clinical algorithms.

Log In    Subscribe The struggle over removing race from clinical algorithms explore the series Many patients are shocked to learn that calculators used to guide their care give different answers depending on their race. This series explores how these race-based clinical algorithms came to pervade medicine, the harm they may cause — and why it's proving so difficult to remove race from the equation. explore the series Part 1 Doctors use problematic race-based algorithms to guide care every day. Why are they so hard to change? Part 2 How race became ubiquitous in medical decision-making tools Part 3 Inside the bruising battle to purge race from a kidney disease calculator Part 4 Upending a longstanding paradigm, cardiologists embrace ZIP codes, not race, to predict heart risk Part 5 She was told she might have cancer: How medicine pathologizes Black patients' normal test results Part 6 A race-free algorithm is merely the start for a safety net hospital confronting an onslaught of kidney disease Part 7 AI threatens to cement racial bias in clinical algorithms. Could it also chart a path forward? A note from our reporters... For both of us, this series is one of the hardest things we've ever worked on... First, it's always challenging to directly confront issues of race. For many people it's an uncomfortable and even taboo topic. Second, the issue of algorithms in medicine is so complex and nuanced. Many of them are invisible, and patients are often completely unaware their race is being used in ways that determine the care they receive. So finding patients who were aware they'd been affected was challenging. We hope this sheds a lot of light on this important and emerging issue. We think everyone will be hearing a lot more about this topic in the future. From Usha McFarling and Katie Palmer National Science & Health Tech Correspondents read the series GET THE SERIES AND MORE SENT TO YOUR INBOX With a STAT+ subscription, you can get email alerts for our health disparities reporting so you can be notified when the next part in the series is published. Learn more STAT, 1 Exchange Place, Boston, MA ©2024, All Rights Reserved. I no longer wish to receive STAT emails Update Newsletter Preferences • Contact Us • Advertise with Us