AI threatens to cement racial bias in clinical algorithms. Could it also chart a path forward?

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — In a cavernous converted chapel at Brown University, physician and data scientist Leo Celi observed from the sidelines as a tableful of high school students passed around a plastic, crocodilian device. The pulse oximeter clamped down on one student’s fingertip: Ninety-seven, he read out loud, before handing it off to the student next to him.

“We as doctors get a bit unhappy when you’re below 90, 92,” said physician Jack Gallifant, who recently finished a postdoc at the MIT Laboratory for Computational Physiology where Celi directs clinical research.

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