Alessandro Blasimme


Last Name

Blasimme

First Name

Alessandro

ORCID

0000-0001-5908-2002

Organisational unit

09614 - Vayena, Eftychia / Vayena, Eftychia

Search Results

Publications 1 - 10 of 91
  • Ethical Aspects of Pediatric Genetic Care: Testing and Treatment
    Item type: Journal Article
    Ormond, Kelly; Blasimme, Alessandro; Vayena, Effy (2023)
    Pediatric Clinics of North America
  • Operational Definition of Active and Healthy Ageing (AHA): A Conceptual Framework.
    Item type: Journal Article
    Bousquet, Jean; Kuh, Diana L.; Bewick, Mickael; et al. (2015)
    The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging
  • What makes clinical machine learning fair? A practical ethics framework
    Item type: Journal Article
    Hoche, Marine; Mineeva, Olga; Rätsch, Gunnar; et al. (2025)
    PLOS Digital Health
    Machine learning (ML) can offer a tremendous contribution to medicine by streamlining decision-making, reducing mistakes, improving clinical accuracy and ensuring better patient outcomes. The prospects of a widespread and rapid integration of machine learning in clinical workflow have attracted considerable attention including due to complex ethical implications–algorithmic bias being among the most frequently discussed ML models. Here we introduce and discuss a practical ethics framework inductively-generated via normative analysis of the practical challenges in developing an actual clinical ML model (see case study). The framework is usable to identify, measure and address bias in clinical machine learning models, thus improving fairness as to both model performance and health outcomes. We detail a proportionate approach to ML bias by defining the demands of fair ML in light of what is ethically justifiable and, at the same time, technically feasible in light of inevitable trade-offs. Our framework enables ethically robust and transparent decision-making both in the design and the context-dependent aspects of ML bias mitigation, thus improving accountability for both developers and clinical users.
  • Fostering inclusive co-creation in digital health
    Item type: Other Journal Item
    Blasimme, Alessandro; Landers, Constantin; Vayena, Effy (2025)
    npj Digital Medicine
    Research on responsible digital health innovation has typically focused on technical aspects such as the reliability and trustworthiness. More recently, work in responsible digital health innovation has started to recognize that, to address those concerns, stakeholder involvement is key. Aligning technological advancements with stakeholders’ needs requires deliberate and inclusive processes. Such processes must incorporate diverse perspectives, including those of the users of digital health technologies, such as healthcare practitionerss and patients.
  • Big Data, precision medicine and private insurance: A delicate balancing act
    Item type: Journal Article
    Blasimme, Alessandro; Vayena, Effy; Van Hoyweghen, Ine (2019)
    Big Data & Society
    In this paper, we discuss how access to health-related data by private insurers, other than affecting the interests of prospective policy-holders, can also influence their propensity to make personal data available for research purposes. We take the case of national precision medicine initiatives as an illustrative example of this possible tendency. Precision medicine pools together unprecedented amounts of genetic as well as phenotypic data. The possibility that private insurers could claim access to such rapidly accumulating biomedical Big Data or to health-related information derived from it would discourage people from enrolling in precision medicine studies. Should that be the case, the economic value of personal data for the insurance industry would end up affecting the public value of data as a scientific resource. In what follows we articulate three principles – trustworthiness, openness and evidence – to address this problem and tame its potentially harmful effects on the development of precision medicine and, more generally, on the advancement of medical science.
  • Unlock Digital Health Promotion in LMICs to Benefit the Youth
    Item type: Working Paper
    Ferretti, Agata; Vayena, Effy; Blasimme, Alessandro (2023)
    SSRN
    As digital technologies such as smartphones and fitness bands become more ubiquitous, individuals can engage in self-monitoring and self-care practices, gaining greater control over their health trajectories along the life-course. These technologies appeal particularly to young people, who are more familiar with the use of digital devices. How this digital transformation facilitates health promotion is therefore an intensely debated topic. However, most research to date focuses on the promise and peril of digital health promotion (DHP) in high-income settings, while the prospects of digital health promotion in low- and middle-income countries remain largely unexplored. This paper aims to fill this gap by critically examining key ethical challenges of implementing DHP in LMICs, with a specific focus on young people. In the existing literature, we identified potential impediments as well as enabling conditions. The aspects to consider in unlocking the potential of DHP include (1) addressing the digital divide and structural injustice in data-related practices; (2) engaging the target population and responding to their needs given their specific economic, cultural, and social contexts; (3) monitoring the quality and impact of DHP over time; (4) improving responsible technology governance and its implementation. Addressing these concerns could result in meaningful health benefits for populations lacking access to more conventional healthcare resources.
  • Digital health: Implications for the doctor-patient relationship
    Item type: Other Conference Item
    Amann, Julia; Vayena, Effy; Blasimme, Alessandro (2019)
    33rd European Conference on Philosophy of Medicine and Healthcare (ESPMH 2019): Book of Abstracts
  • Issues about the use of subjective cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease research
    Item type: Journal Article
    Canevelli, Marco; Blasimme, Alessandro; Vanacore, Nicola; et al. (2014)
    Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association
  • Ethics review of big data research: What should stay and what should be reformed?
    Item type: Journal Article
    Ferretti, Agata; Ienca, Marcello; Sheehan, Mark; et al. (2021)
    BMC Medical Ethics
    Background Ethics review is the process of assessing the ethics of research involving humans. The Ethics Review Committee (ERC) is the key oversight mechanism designated to ensure ethics review. Whether or not this governance mechanism is still fit for purpose in the data-driven research context remains a debated issue among research ethics experts. Main text In this article, we seek to address this issue in a twofold manner. First, we review the strengths and weaknesses of ERCs in ensuring ethical oversight. Second, we map these strengths and weaknesses onto specific challenges raised by big data research. We distinguish two categories of potential weakness. The first category concerns persistent weaknesses, i.e., those which are not specific to big data research, but may be exacerbated by it. The second category concerns novel weaknesses, i.e., those which are created by and inherent to big data projects. Within this second category, we further distinguish between purview weaknesses related to the ERC’s scope (e.g., how big data projects may evade ERC review) and functional weaknesses, related to the ERC’s way of operating. Based on this analysis, we propose reforms aimed at improving the oversight capacity of ERCs in the era of big data science. Conclusions We believe the oversight mechanism could benefit from these reforms because they will help to overcome data-intensive research challenges and consequently benefit research at large.
  • The plasticity of ageing and the rediscovery of ground-state prevention
    Item type: Journal Article
    Blasimme, Alessandro (2021)
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
    In this paper, I present an emerging explanatory framework about ageing and care. In particular, I focus on how, in contrast to most classical accounts of ageing, biomedicine today construes the ageing process as a modifiable trajectory. This framing turns ageing from a stage of inexorable decline into the focus of preventive strategies, harnessing the functional plasticity of the ageing organism. I illustrate this shift by focusing on studies of the demographic dynamics in human population, observations of ageing as an intraspecifically heterogenous phenotype, and the experimental manipulation of longevity, in both model organisms and humans. I suggest that such an explanatory framework about ageing creates the epistemological conditions for the rise of a peculiar form of prevention that does not aim to address a specific condition. Rather it seeks to stall the age-related accumulation of molecular damage and functional deficits, boosting individual resilience against age-related decline. I call this preventive paradigm “ground-state prevention.” While new, ground-state prevention bears conceptual resemblance to forms of medical wisdom prominent in classic Galenic medicine, as well as in the Renaissance period.
Publications 1 - 10 of 91