# AI‐Assisted Decision‐Making for End‐Stage Organ Failure: Opportunities and Ethical Concerns

**Authors:** John W. Haller, Olga D. Brazhnik, Kathleen N. Fenton

PMC · DOI: 10.1111/aor.70027 · Artificial Organs · 2025-11-17

## TL;DR

AI can help doctors treat patients with severe organ failure by predicting outcomes and supporting decisions, but ethical issues like fairness and privacy must be addressed.

## Contribution

The paper introduces how AI can align treatment with patient values while addressing ethical and practical challenges in organ failure care.

## Key findings

- AI can improve risk stratification and outcome prediction in organ failure treatment.
- Patients want AI to support, not replace, compassionate care from doctors.
- Successful AI integration requires collaboration across disciplines and ethical design.

## Abstract

AI holds significant promise for guiding clinical decisions in end‐stage organ failure, where treatment options now include medical management, transplantation, mechanical support devices, and palliative care. This paper discusses current applications of AI in healthcare, emphasizing the complex decision‐making necessary for patients with organ failure. It outlines how AI can support risk stratification, patient selection, and outcome prediction, particularly in transplantation practices that increasingly rely on robust data to inform care pathways. By analyzing large datasets from electronic health records, imaging, and patient‐reported outcomes, AI can help physicians forecast long‐term survival and quality of life, and potentially assist clinicians in modifying treatment strategies before adverse trajectories take hold. There is a need for standardized, high‐quality data, rigorous validation, and transparent algorithms to mitigate biases that could exacerbate disparities in care. Ethical considerations demand attention to equitable access, patient privacy, and the preservation of the human element in patient‐clinician relationships. Patients generally view AI with cautious optimism, recognizing its potential to augment care but also voicing concerns about data protection and the risk of losing compassionate, personal care. Importantly, AI can help with “alignment,” or fitting treatment recommendations to patients' values, and promote sustainable and patient‐centered outcomes. Ultimately, the successful integration of AI into daily practice requires multidisciplinary collaboration among developers, clinicians, ethicists, and regulators. Deep stakeholder engagement, continuous algorithmic refinement, and user‐friendly design are pivotal to ensuring that AI serves as a practical decision‐support tool that complements, rather than replaces, clinical expertise and shared decision‐making.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help physicians make better decisions for people with serious organ problems by analyzing medical data to predict outcomes. Patients want AI to support, not replace, personal care from doctors. Collaboration among experts ensures AI tools respect patient values and privacy.

## Full-text entities

- **Diseases:** organ failure (MESH:D009102), End-Stage Organ Failure (MESH:D007676)
- **Species:** Homo sapiens (human, species) [taxon 9606]

## Full text

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## Figures

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## References

39 references — full list in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12993254/full.md

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Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12993254