Precision Medicine Raises Unique Ethics Concerns in Emergency Department
April 1, 2025
By Stacey Kusterbeck
Precision medicine technologies are rapidly advancing in healthcare, but this approach also presents some ethical challenges. “There is always a complexity between doing the most good for the most people and doing what is best for the individual in front of us. Precision medicine puts that tension in the forefront,” says Christian Rose, MD, an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Rose and colleagues conducted a study to examine ethics concerns specific to the specialty of emergency medicine.1 The emergency department setting, as healthcare’s safety net, differs from other specialties involved in precision medicine. Precision emergency medicine uses “information and technology to deliver acute care effectively, efficiently, and authentically to individual patients and their communities.”2 The researchers thought this was important to explore.
The researchers interviewed 12 emergency physicians who had previous knowledge of precision medicine concepts. Physicians’ top ethical concerns were safety of data, maintaining a trusting relationship with the patient, and how information could be used to exacerbate inequalities.
“Clinicians should consider the balance between the need for an answer that is ‘more accurate’ than standard of care, and why recording, storing, using, and sharing data may be necessary to achieve that end,” says Rose. It is unclear whether emergency department patients share the same concerns as their physicians about precision medicine. “The important thing is to be aware of the risks, discuss the benefits, and then make a decision from there,” says Rose.
Ethicists can help emergency physicians to navigate the uncertainty in these scenarios. One way ethicists can help is by unburdening physicians from the “analysis paralysis” that they may struggle with, suggests Rose. “I find it can give me confidence when ethicists weigh in, as much as any other specialist in medical care. And we need more ethicists now more than ever,” says Rose.
References
1. Rose C, Shearer E, Woller I, et al. Identifying high-priority ethical challenges for precision emergency medicine: Nominal group study. JMIR Form Res. 2025;9:e68371.
2. Strehlow M, Alvarez A, Blomkalns AL, et al. Precision emergency medicine. Acad Emerg Med. 2024;31(11):1150-1164.
Precision medicine technologies are rapidly advancing in healthcare, but this approach also presents some ethical challenges.
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