Addressing racism with compassion, data analytics

This article is written byJohn Halamka, M.D.,president, Mayo Clinic Platform, andPaul Cerrato,senior research analyst and communications specialist, Mayo Clinic Platform.We speak often about the need to combine human and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve patient care. Equally important is the marriage of compassion and data analytics ― a powerful duo that is proving invaluable in the battle to eradicate the systemic racism that still permeates health care.Unfortunately, numerous examples demonstrate that systemic racism continues to affect the patient experience and leads to mistrust of health care institutions among people of color.Some of us are familiar with the unethicalTuskegee syphilis study, in which the U.S. Public Health Service observed a large population of African American men with untreated syphilis between 1932 and 1972. As part of that study, participants with syphilis were not informed of their diagnosis, nor treated for it. They were told they were receiving free health care from the federal government.As another example of systemic racism in health care, a recent journal article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America revealed that among 1.8 million U.S. births, the Black newborn mortality rate was three times higher when white doctors delivered the child, compared to Black doctors.Awareness of such prejudices causes fear of interacting with the health care system, as evidenced by a December 2020survey b...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Information Technology Source Type: blogs