Ethical Considerations of AI in End‑of‑Life Care

As AI becomes an integral part of healthcare (and a core feature of Moonset Health’s scribe platform) it’s crucial to consider its ethical implications, especially in the sensitive realm of end‑of‑life care. While we've designed Moonset's AI scribe with with privacy safeguards, explainable outputs, and bias‑mitigation in mind, we believe that the true measure of success in our space is how well AI supports compassion, preserves dignity, and fosters trust.

Respecting Patient Autonomy
Whenever AI assists, whether by suggesting symptom‑management options or drafting clinical notes, patients and their families deserve clear explanations of its role. Obtaining informed consent shouldn’t be a mere checkbox; it means sharing straightforward examples of how AI influences care. And though AI can flag concerning trends or propose medication adjustments, a qualified clinician always reviews and confirms those suggestions. This partnership keeps human judgment at the center and honors each patient’s right to choose.

Maximizing Benefit, Minimizing Harm
Automating documentation and detecting subtle clinical changes can free nurses for more bedside time, but no algorithm is perfect. That’s why we monitor real‑world performance (tracking error rates, correction frequencies, and near‑misses) and continuously refine our models. Equally important is avoiding “automation bias,” where staff defer unthinkingly to AI recommendations. By fostering a culture in which clinicians feel empowered to question and override AI outputs, we ensure the technology remains a supportive aide, never a substitute for clinical expertise.

Ensuring Justice and Equity
AI models reflect their training data, so if that data doesn’t represent your community’s full diversity, performance gaps can emerge. Moonset Health prioritizes diverse datasets and validates model accuracy across demographic groups. Additionally, features like multilingual transcription and adjustable text‑to‑speech settings help guarantee all patients benefit equally from AI‑enhanced care.

Protecting Privacy and Confidentiality
In hospice, privacy is non‑negotiable. Our AI platform employs end‑to‑end encryption, strict access controls, and routine security audits to meet or exceed HIPAA standards. We practice data minimization, collecting only the clinical details necessary for each function, to reduce risk and reinforce patient trust.

Championing Transparency and Explainability
Opaque “black‑box” models can erode confidence among clinicians and families. Instead, Moonset surfaces confidence scores and highlights the exact phrases that influenced each recommendation, making the AI’s reasoning clear. We partner with vendors who share model documentation, validation studies, and performance metrics, so your team can audit and understand every decision.

Building Robust Governance
Ethical AI is an ongoing commitment. Establishing a cross‑functional steering committee (clinicians, ethicists, security experts, and patient advocates) helps review performance dashboards, address incidents, and update policies. By tracking correction rates, demographic disparities, and user‑feedback scores, teams can make data‑driven choices about when to retrain or retire models.

Cultivating an Ethical AI Culture
Technology succeeds only when people trust it. We offer interactive workshops that demystify AI, clarify its limitations, and define the clinician’s oversight role. At the same time, we provide patients and families with plain‑language guides—short videos or brochures that explain how AI supports, but never replaces, compassionate care. Inviting feedback from all stakeholders ensures AI enhances, rather than hinders, the human connection at the heart of hospice.

By grounding every step in respect for autonomy, beneficence, equity, privacy, transparency, and strong governance—and by embedding these principles into Moonset’s design—we can deploy AI that eases administrative burdens while deepening the trust and compassion central to exceptional end‑of‑life care. We at Moonset pride ourselves on how we've honored these principles, and we challenge other AI applications in the end-of-life space to do the same.