Stanford apologizes for its algorithm that excluded front-line physicians from the vaccine while distributing it to management. As Technology Review reports:
When resident physicians at Stanford Medical Center—many of whom work on the frontlines of the covid-19 pandemic—found out that only seven out of over 1,300 of them had been prioritized for the first 5,000 doses of the covid vaccine, they were shocked. Then, when they saw who else had made the list, including administrators and doctors seeing patients remotely from home, they were angry. During a planned photo op to celebrate the first vaccinations taking place on Friday December 18, at least 100 residents showed up to protest. Hospital leadership apologized for not prioritizing them, and blamed the errors on “a very complex algorithm.” “Our algorithm, that the ethicists, infectious disease experts worked on for weeks… clearly didn’t work right,” Tim Morrison, the director of the ambulatory care team, told residents at the event in a video posted online. Many saw that as an excuse, especially since hospital leadership had been made aware of the problem on Tuesday—when only five residents made the list—and responded not by fixing the algorithm, but by adding two more resident names for a total of seven.
No surprise here. First it was a Silicon Valley system, that is self survival, second it involved those illusive Medical Ethicists.
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