Trust Your Decisions To A Computer, Study Finds

A study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) shows computers might do a better job than family members when it comes to guessing the wishes of critically ill hospital patients.

Researcher David Wendler, a bioethicist for NIH in Baltimore, made a surprising discovery when he compared the accuracy of loved ones versus computers in determining whether a medical patient would want to receive life-saving treatment in a dire emergency.

The issue strikes home to people whose family members have been incapacitated before signing an "advance directive" order, which specifies what treatments patients wish to receive if they lose the ability to make decisions. In situations where terminally ill or comatose patients do not have advance directives in place before, life and death decisions fall to their closest relatives and caregivers. These life or death decisions can be extremely difficult, especially when surrogates must guess at what the patient would have wanted.

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And how exactly does the doctor ask the computer if a feeding tube is appropriate? I'm not sure that can be easily programmed in.

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