When Will Death Be? Legal Considerations and Regulatory Safeguards in Predictive Modelling Applications for...

Advance care planning (ACP) is generally considered as valuable in guiding treatments that are aligned with patients' preferences. Despite its benefits, there are some practical and legal difficulties in its implementation. Predictive modelling is increasingly used in clinical decision-making, for example, in predicting patients' life expectancy, thus enabling clinicians to initiate timely ACP conversations. This development could transform the way end-of-life conversations are implemented. In this article we advocate for the use of predictive modelling in assisting clinicians to initiate ACP conversations provided several safeguards are in place to address ethical concerns that arise. Predictive modelling applications resolve several practical and legal difficulties in conducting end-of-life conversations. Ethical concerns such as explicability, accountability, trustworthiness and reliability of these models in clinical settings are important considerations. However, safeguards are needed to address these ethical concerns to ensure the models are appropriately supportive of patient needs and interests.