Incident 91: Frontline workers protest at Stanford after hospital distributed vaccine to administrators

Description: In 2020, Stanford Medical Center's distribution algorithm only designated 7 of 5,000 vaccines to Medical Residents, who are frontline workers regularly exposed to COVID-19.

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Alleged: Stanford Medical Center developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Stanford Medical frontline workers and Stanford Medical residents.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
91
Report Count
5
Incident Date
2020-12-18
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam

CSET Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Full Description

In 2020, Stanford Medical Center residents protested the Center's distribution of only 7 of the 5,000 COVID-19 vaccines it had received to Medical Residents, who were frontline workers compared to other hospital staff less exposed to COVID-19. Stanford Medical Center employed an algorithm to determine vaccine distribution, and its weight of certain factors alongside the lack on information inputted for Medical Residents shaped the outcome of the distribution plan. The algorithm alledly prioritised age and superiority of position, regardless of physician's physical location at the Stanford Medical Center during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Short Description

In 2020, Stanford Medical Center's distribution algorithm only designated 7 of 5,000 vaccines to Medical Residents, who are frontline workers regularly exposed to COVID-19.

Severity

Minor

Harm Distribution Basis

Age, Ideology, Other:Physician superiority status

Harm Type

Harm to physical health/safety

AI System Description

Stanford Medical Center's algorithm used a rules-based formula for calculating who would get the COVID-19 vaccine first at Stanford. It considers three categories: “employee-based variables,” which have to do with age; “job-based variables”; and guidelines from the California Department of Public Health. For each category, staff received a certain number of points, with a total possible score of 3.48. Presumably, the higher the score, the higher the person’s priority in line.

System Developer

Stanford Medical Center

Sector of Deployment

Human health and social work activities

Relevant AI functions

Cognition

AI Techniques

machine learning

AI Applications

decision support

Location

Stanford Medical Center

Named Entities

Stanford Medical Center

Technology Purveyor

Stanford Medical Center

Beginning Date

12/2020

Ending Date

12/2020

Near Miss

Unclear/unknown

Intent

Accident

Lives Lost

No

Data Inputs

names, age, location, position, job, COVID-19 tests

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.