Professor Dr. Erik Hahn gave a lecture on "The patient's right not to know in algorithm-controlled risk assessment using big data" at the annual conference of the Academy for Ethics in Medicine (AEM ) on September 14, 2018. The conference with the general theme "Medicine 4.0 - Ethics in Digital Healthcare" took place at the University of Cologne and was jointly organized by the AEM and the Cologne Center for Ethics, Rights, Economics, and Social Sciences of Health (ceres). The subject of the presentation was the question of whether the rapidly advancing development of algorithm-controlled risk assessment in medicine requires a legislative response to protect patients' "ignorance". Just like genetic examinations and analyses, which show patients their unchangeable fate, (other) algorithm-controlled risk assessment procedures can also give patients a comparably intensive (predictive) look into their own future. It cannot simply be assumed that all patients wish to know their own fate. For this reason, the legislator has linked the disclosure of genetic information by the doctor to the patient's consent. The lecture discussed the question of whether a generally applicable regulation is required to protect the "right not to know" outside of the Genetic Diagnosis Act. It should be noted that not only traditional players in the healthcare industry now have the opportunity to make forward-looking statements about the health development of their customers. For example, an attempt was recently made at Columbia University in New York to determine the user's future risk of pancreatic cancer based on entries in the Bing search engine.
The revised manuscript of the lecture is intended for publication in the journal Medizinrecht (MedR) published by Springer-Verlag.
Prof. Dr. iur. Erik Hahn
Professorship of Civil Law, Commercial Law and Real Estate Law
Faculty of Economics and Industrial Engineering &
Institute for Health, Ageing and Technology (GAT)
Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences
House Z II, Room 002
Schliebenstraße 21
02763 Zittau
03583 612-4619
erik.hahn@hszg.de