Applying language technology to nursing documents: pros and cons with a focus on ethics.

Area of Science:

• Nursing Informatics
• Bioethics
• Artificial Intelligence

Background:

• Electronic nursing documentation is increasingly vital for patient care.
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) offers potential advancements in analyzing and utilizing this data.
• Ethical considerations surrounding data privacy and clinical decision-making are paramount.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the ethical implications of building and using NLP applications in electronic nursing documentation.
• To investigate methods for ensuring patient confidentiality during NLP development.
• To analyze ethical outcomes of using NLP to support clinical judgment and decision-making.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a review of scientific literature on ethics in electronic health records and large databases.
• Compared findings with nursing ethical guidelines and Finnish healthcare/data protection legislation.
• Incorporated authors' practical experiences with NLP in nursing documents.

Main Results:

• NLP can enhance the quality, efficiency, and individualization of patient care.
• NLP may improve patient access to health information and narrative quality.
• Ethical challenges include ensuring patient confidentiality and preventing misuse of data for unintended purposes.

Conclusions:

• NLP in nursing documents offers significant potential benefits for care quality.
• Potential risks, particularly to patient confidentiality and rights, must be carefully managed.
• Responsible development and application of NLP are essential to maximize benefits while mitigating ethical threats.