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Where Do Vaccine Doses Go, and Who Gets Them? The Algorithms Decide

What I find interesting

This article mentions about the impact of using algorithms in logistics and healthcare. With heavy reliance on automation, there is a notion that algorithms are able to reduce manual labour of sorting and reading data. However, governments do not recognize how algorithms are created by humans and will still be bound to discrepancies and bias. Such as the lack of prioritization of distributing vaccines within different states. Prioririting teachers over the elderly and allowing smokers infront of educators in the vaccine line, algorithms rely on allocation formulas that does not consider unethical outcomes. Understanding algorithms requires a high-technology literacy, yet government officials lack to understand the nuances of how they may hinder the overall community rather than benefit. Additionally, the lack of transparency about how these algorithms work to distribute vaccinations have created ambiguity amongst medical facilities. As a result, some facilities have resorted to their own prioritiziation methods to ensure a more equitable approach. Thus this article highlights not only highlights the need for a higher technology-literacy rate to understand the impact of algorithms, but also the need to understand how pre-existing data used to generate algorithms may not be up to date and make algorithms a burden than a benefit to society.

Comments

What I found interesting about the article was how the Tiberius algorithm was allowed to make significant changes without notifying local leaders. The algorithm is a product of whichever group created it, so whether that was intentional is concerning, especially for something as critical as vaccine distribution. - Andrew Huang