Читать книгу Data protection for the prevention of algorithmic discrimination - Alba Soriano Arnanz - Страница 23

Algorithms can be used to improve the lack of efficiency and effectiveness that have traditionally characterised some of the actions carried out by public administrations.

In the health sector, medical data, including a person’s genetic information and exercise or dietary habits, may be collected and used in order to, amongst other objectives, determine an individual’s chance of developing a certain disease or illness.133 For example, a public hospital in Spain has developed an algorithm which improves the early detection of sepsis cases.134

Furthermore, and although the focus of this research is the role of algorithms in Western societies, it is also relevant to point out how the use of these technologies in developing countries can prevent the national emergency situations that are sometimes caused by disease outbreaks. A clear example is the development of an algorithm used in Cambodia to promptly detect major dengue outbreaks.135

Moreover, the use of algorithms has proven useful in the current Covid19 pandemic. Automated systems have been and are, at the time of writing, being used in order to track the virus, detect especially vulnerable patients and for other purposes aimed towards improving management of the virus.136

Algorithms and models are also used in order to improve public education, especially in the USA. For example, O’Neil137 analyses the case of teacher evaluations in Washington D.C. The evaluation resulted from the combination school administrators’ opinion on each teacher with a score generated by algorithm. The automated score outweighed opinions in order to reduce human bias. This particular case became especially prominent given that no procedural rights were granted to teachers fired as a result of their algorithmic score. Additionally, it is also suspected that the system was not able to detect inflated test scores resulting from teachers correcting their students’ answers in standardised tests.138

In addition, the US Department of Education has been working on improving teaching and learning through the use of data mining and learning analysis.139