Ethical and Privacy Issues in the Use of Machine Learning for Personalized Care for Elderly Patients

Abstract

Machine learning presents various advantages when used in care personalization for the elderly. However, it also raises ethical and data privacy problems that must be addressed. The primary focus of this research is to present a comparative analysis of ethical and privacy issues in machine learning and traditional big data analytics tools. The qualitative research uses secondary data from past studies to achieve this objective. The main conclusion from the research is that machine learning presents similar ethical and data privacy problems as other tools. However, machine learning offers predictive capabilities that can be used to predict and mitigate these risks. Therefore, some applications of machine learning should be eliminated in geriatrics, especially monitoring and surveillance. Alternatively, these applications should require patients' informed consent.