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An Ethics Framework for a Learning Health Care System: A Departure from Traditional Research Ethics and Clinical Ethics

By Ruth R. Faden, Nancy E. Kass, Steven N. Goodman, Peter Pronovost, Sean Tunis, and Tom L. Beauchamp.

Abstract

Calls are increasing for American health care to be organized as a learning health care system, defined by the Institute of Medicine as a health care system “in which knowledge generation is so embedded into the core of the practice of medicine that it is a natural outgrowth and product of the healthcare delivery process and leads to continual improvement in care.” We applaud this conception, and in this paper, we put forward a new ethics framework for it. No such framework has previously been articulated. The goals of our framework are twofold: to support the transformation to a learning health care system and to help ensure that learning activities carried out within such a system are conducted in an ethically acceptable fashion.

Faden, R.R., Kass, N.E., Goodman, S.N., Pronovost, P., Tunis, S. and Beauchamp, T.L. (2013), An Ethics Framework for a Learning Health Care System: A Departure from Traditional Research Ethics and Clinical Ethics. Hastings Center Report, 43: S16-S27. https://doi.org/10.1002/hast.134

Website: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hast.134/abstract