Artificial Intelligence: Who is held liable for errors caused by medical devices or machines?
Technology has been introduced into the medical world just like it has been integrated into our daily lives and has become an indispensable element.
Since a human being’s accuracy and precision is less than that of a machine, the integration of machines in the physicians’ daily lives has been more common.
We can say that the main reason behind it is to reduce the number of errors and prevent mistakes from happening as much as possible.
But errors happen, and mistakes can’t be avoided. They will happen sooner or later. Before using medical devices, allocating responsibilities was easy. The physician will be responsible for faulty and wrongful acts conducted by him, but what about machines?
It sure can’t be the one held liable for a false diagnostic, for example. Hence, the question that arises is the following:
Who is held liable for errors caused by medical devices or machines?
When we talk about errors, there are different types of medical errors. It could be a surgical error, a diagnostic error, a medication error.
Since we are talking about errors concerning machines, allocating liabilities becomes a more complex operation.
As a first notion, it is essential to point out that each physician should act by the “standard of care” set out in the medical field. This means that every physician should act just like any other physician would have acted if he were put in his shoes. If a physician doesn’t act following this standard, he will be considered negligent and held liable.
For this reason, the physician is often held liable even if the error made involved a medical device when the latter doesn’t take the adequate measures expected from him. After all, if the machine offers significant advantages, the physician should have excellent management skills. It is similar to this saying “the greater the risk, the greater the reward.”
When for example, a machine is made to assist the physician in diagnosing a tumor, the physician should consider the result given by the machine and think it through, not just take it without questioning it. He is still the physician and the person responsible. Therefore his responsibility of giving the proper diagnostic resides.
However, an error was still made when the physician has taken all the adequate measures that any other physician would have taken. It is impossible to hold him liable for something he didn’t commit. Here, it is essential to search for the responsible party, the manufacturer (the party that has manufactured the device). It could be the device designer (the party that has designed the device and its specifications).
This is why what we can say is that there is not a general rule. Each case shall be studied separately to allocate responsibilities and compensate the relative patient.
