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Medical Ethics 2020: Ethical Challenges of Established and Emerging Medical Technologies
This conference will explore ethical challenges presented by emerging medical technologies that promise to revolutionize patient care, medical research, and the prevention or course of many acute and chronic conditions. Some of these technologies challenge privacy, peace of mind, and the pocketbooks of families and societies. They may challenge established ways of caregiving and communicating. The conference will also reexamine unresolved ethical issues associated with well-established medical technologies whose use often presents trade-offs between longevity and quality of life, as well as difficult decisions that involve weighing risks, costs, hopes, and personal values.
At both the social, health system-wide level and the level of individual patients’ decision making and clinical care, the implementation of available technologies may seem inevitable. Yet the personal, social, legal, and ethical implications of their use can and should be evaluated. Resistance to the so-called technological imperative—if it can be done, it should be done—may not involve rejection of a technology, but instead its judicious embrace, its carefully evaluated adoption. Ethical embrace of technology may involve helping individuals make informed decisions about it, decisions that may sometimes involve saying ‘no’ to technology as traditionally conceived, and turning instead to a different type of techne, to skills, techniques, and processes of care less directly mediated by machines or amenable to quantification.
This conference affords participants and opportunity to learn about recent technological developments and to discuss their potential benefits, risks, and ways to mitigate those risks. A goal of the conference is to enable participants to make informed choices about employing technological interventions at the individual level and to respond responsibly to technologies being implemented within healthcare systems and society.
Learning Objectives
Following the conference, participants should be able to:
- Elucidate the social costs and benefits of implementing systems-based and/or predictive medical technologies (e.g., electronic health record, machine learning, precision medicine, predictive analytics).
- Discuss values-related risks and benefits of commencing medical technological interventions for individual patients (e.g., dialysis, ventilator support), and the challenges of stopping or forgoing their use.
- Compare ethical challenges associated with established and emerging technologies, preventive strategies, and therapeutic modalities for acute and chronic conditions (e.g., cancer, sickle cell disease, renal failure, depression).
Additional Information
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 MedEth2020 - March 20 2020 - Final Program for website.pdf | 329.65 KB |
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
8:00 – 8:30 am | Registration and Continental Breakfast |
8:30 – 8:40 am | Welcome and Introduction |
8:40 – 9:45 am | Frankenswine and the Suffering Un-dead: A Bioethical Look at Restoring Function in Post-mortem Pig Brains |
9:45 – 10:50 am | Ethics and Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Beyond the Hype |
10:50 – 11:00 am | Break |
11:00 – 12:15 pm | Dilemmas and Disparities: Dialysis Decision-making Among Seriously Ill Patients with Kidney Disease |
12:15 – 1:00 PM | Lunch on your own |
1:00 – 2:00 pm | Concurrent sessions #1 – 3 |
Session #1 | Electronic Health Records: Ethical Perspectives from Primary Care |
Session #2 | Personalized Medicine in Cancer Care: Benefits, Burdens, and Ethical Implications |
Session #3 | Prediction and Prudence: Ethical Issues in Predicting Surgical Outcomes to Inform Decision Making |
2:00 – 2:10 pm | Break |
2:10 – 3:10 pm | Concurrent sessions #4 – 6 |
Session #4 | Social Media, Privacy, and Suicide Prevention |
Session #5 | Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant (HSCT) in Sickle Cell Disease: Patients’ and Providers’ Ethical Concerns |
Session #6 | The Clinical Ethics Implications of Care Robots |
3:10 – 3:15 pm | Transition to next session |
3:15 – 4:15 pm | Concurrent sessions #7 – 9 |
Session #7 | The Future Imperfect: Machine Learning and Ethical Issues in the Prediction of Violence |
Session #8 | The Perils and Promise of the “Right to Try” Unproven Medical Treatments |
| Session #9 | Ethical Challenges of Genomic Technologies and Genetic Information in Clinical Care |
4:20 pm | Wrap up and Evaluation |
4:30 pm | Conference Adjournment |
COURSE DIRECTOR
*Lisa S. Parker, PhD, Dickie, McCamey & Chilcote Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Center for Bioethics & Health Law
Ira R. Messer Lecture:
Frankenswine and the Suffering Un-dead: A Bioethical Look at Restoring Function in Post-mortem Pig Brains
Stephen R. Latham, JD, PhD
Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics
Yale University
Plenary Lecture:
Ethics and Artificial Intelligence in Medicine: Beyond the Hype
Alex John London, PhD
Clara L. West Professor of Ethics and Philosophy
Director of the Center for Ethics and Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
Keynote Lecture:
Dilemmas and Disparities: Dialysis Decision-making Among Seriously Ill Patients with Kidney Disease
Nwamaka D. Eneanya, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology
University of Pennsylvania
CONFERENCE PLANNING COMMITTEE
**Greer Donley, JD, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh
Philip E. Empey, PharmD, PhD, Associate Professor of Pharmacy and Therapeutics, University of Pittsburgh
*Emily Herrington, PhD, Science, Ethics, and Society Initiative Program Coordinator, University of Pittsburgh
**Valerie Satkoske, MSW, PhD, Associate Director, Center for Health Ethics & Law, West Virginia University
**Jennifer Seaman, PhD, RN, Assistant Professor of Acute & Tertiary Care, School of Nursing, University of Pittsburgh
**Gaetan Sgro, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh
*Center for Bioethics & Health Law faculty or staff member
**Center for Bioethics & Health Law affiliated faculty member
In support of improving patient care, the University of Pittsburgh is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) and the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.
Physician (CME)
The University of Pittsburgh designates this live activity for a maximum of 6.75 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Nursing (CNE)
The maximum number of hours awarded for this Continuing Nursing Education activity is 6.75 contact hours.
Pharmacy (CPE)
This knowledge-based activity provides 6.75 contact hours of continuing pharmacy education credit.
Social Work
As a Jointly Accredited Organization, University of Pittsburgh is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved under this program. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. University of Pittsburgh maintains responsibility for this course. Social workers completing this course receive 6.75 continuing education credits.
Other Healthcare Professionals
Other health care professionals will receive a certificate of attendance confirming the number of contact hours commensurate with the extent of participation in this activity.
This program has been approved by the Pennsylvania Continuing Legal Education Board for 6.0 hours of substantive credit, available to those who have registered and paid the $120 fee for processing CLE credit for this event.
Available Credit
- 0.25 ACPE PharmacyThe UPMC Center for Continuing Education in the Health Sciences is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) as a Provider of continuing pharmacy education.
- 0.25 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
- 0.25 ANCCUPMC Provider Unit is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation
- 0.25 Attendance
Price
Registering online is the quickest and easiest way to reserve your space at CCEHS conferences.
• Visit our online registration at https://cce.upmc.com/medethics2020
• Click the Register/Complete Course button and enter all requested information
• After registering, an electronic confirmation will be sent to the email address you provided us when you registered.
For additional information, please contact Jody Stockdill at jody.stockdill@pitt.edu.
All cancellations must be in writing and sent via email or fax (bioethics@pitt.edu; fax: 412-623-3592). Tuition for cancellations received before March 13, 2020 at 5pm will be refunded in full; thereafter, a $15 administrative fee will be assessed and the remaining amount refunded. No refunds will be made for cancellations after March 17 at 5pm.