Weapons of Math Destruction: A Review

On By Stuck on Social WorkIn General issues, Healthcare, Macro Social Work, mental health, technologyLeave a comment

In the last 8 months or so I have been making a shift from technology enthusiast to a bit of  a tech skeptic.  Technology is certainly becoming more ubiquitous and this comes with benefits but it also comes with costs.  In healthcare and mental health, I have been pondering what pieces of technology will bring about change. Not only that but what kinds of design will people use and is it ethical?

I recently captured a twitter thread about the unintended consequences of technology. Also spending the last month or so reading “Weapons of Math Destruction” by Cathy O’Neil has challenged a lot of my assumptions about data collection.

As somebody who still has my research core from my undergraduate education, I assumed that all this acceleration of data can only yield positive results (especially understanding those in under-served area’s) but the above book has proven me wrong.   There is a lot of data collection that has potential to further divide us and often exclude other. The book goes into vast detail but here are a few examples…

  1.  Judges often use algorithms to determine sentencing of criminals. This determined by “risk of further offense”. This often leads them to people in poverty and minorities; creating a vicious cycle of incarcerating communities and those who associate with them.
  2. Police Departments are using algorithms to predict where crime “may happen” also create a similar feedback loop where they focus on certain neighborhoods. Leading to increased “stop and frisk practices” and increase in arrests in certain pockets.
  3. Insurance Companies (including Life, Health, and Car insurance) have always relied on math of some kind but are increasingly leaving this work up to computers. Life and car insurance companies are frequently relying on credit scores. Not only can these credit scores be inaccurate and prejudicial but some companies use their own opaque “e-score” to determine insurance rates. Leading to people being denied or being priced out without knowing why.

She calls these algorithms that create these feedback loops Weapons of Math Destruction or “WMD’s”.  Going into detail into many other examples she describes  3 main elements of WMD’s.  First is the Opacity or lack of transparency about what is being measured and how. Second is the scale of how many individuals it may impact and lastly what is the damage or potential consequences.

On January 23,2018 the #HTreads (Health Tech reads) twitter chat will gathered to answer some questions about the book. Here were some of the resources/thoughts I found helpful..

What are some early successes with using big data in healthcare?

 

Moving forward Data Scientists have to be critical of the ways we are using big data in healthcare. In a multidisciplinary manner, we have to ensure that we are being more intentional about asking these ethical questions.

My Top 5 Blog Posts of 2017 (and some highlights

On By Stuck on Social WorkIn addictions, case mangagement, crisis intervention, Healthcare, mental health, social media, technologyLeave a comment

It has been an interesting year on the blog with my usual mix of musings of things that caught my eye, conferences, and of course following conferences on twitter.  Without further or do here is the blogs you found most interesting in 2017…

  1. SocialWorkr

Socialworkr is a social media platform geared just for social workers. It got the most views on LinkedIn due to interest in the The National Association of Social Workers group.  Glad to see that it lead to a boost in membership and hope more social workers take a look as result of it being tops in 2017.

2.  The Facebook Manifesto and Why Social Work Should Come Along The Ride”

I continue to have an ongoing interest in technology but this year I have been more attuned to the intersection of social work and technology. Facebook has had a roller coaster year in terms of it’s impact on social issues. But earlier this year founder Mark Zuckerburgh released “Building A Global Community”. There is a lot of synergy between this and social work values.

3. Why You Need A Social Worker On Your UX Design Team 

This blog post started the conversation that I hoped it would. As I have been following technology, design thinking and looking at the UX (user experience) for apps and electronic health records has become more prevalent.  When thinking critically, one observes a lot of “tech fails” in design. I started to think about how maybe social work can come to the rescue.

4. Keeping Up With #SWDE2017 (Social Work Distance Education Conference)

As I continue to get more involved in teaching in training, twitter has continued to allow me to follow the Social Work Distance Education conference held every Spring here in the United States. Myself and others found the live tweeting both helpful and insightful.

5. #NatCon17: More Hope And Promise 

This year I had the privilege of being a social media ambassador for The National Council on Behavioral Health annual conference.  It is the largest behavioral health conference in the United States and it was great to be there. In a year of political turmoil it was great to focus on solutions and some great examples innovation in behavior health.

 

Some other highlights…

My personal highlight of the year was attending and presenting at the Network for Social Management conference in New York City.  The theme was the “Business of Social Work” and I captured my summary of the conference here. Like attending NatCon this gave me a sense of hope and empowerment.

I enjoyed writing my first guest post on Healthcare Scene about bridging the gap between the Health IT community and social work.

I am already looking forward to 2018 where I am currently working on CEU course on ethics and social media.  Also in March I will attend The Health Information and Management Systems conference as a social media ambassador.

Thanks all for stopping by and looking forward to writing more in 2018 🙂

 

“Hey Google…How Old Are You?”

On By Stuck on Social WorkIn case mangagement, Healthcare, mental health, technologyLeave a comment

As someone who keeps up with technology, I may have underestimated the power of voice technology.  This as I am a few day removed from watching my 5 and 9 year old son’s play with a Google Dot. They couldn’t tear themselves away asking Google the above question in the title” and many more like…

“Hey Google… What’s Your Phone Number?”

“Hey Google… What’s 10 + 1?”

“Hey Google… What’s 72 x 95?”

“Hey Google… Tell me a Joke?”

… They were completely captivated and it was difficult to tear them away.  Of course this made me rethink voice technology in the realm of healthcare and mental health. This year Luminary Labs (a consulting firm that develops strategies and innovation systems to help organizations thrive in the face of change) had a contest to fund a company using Voice technology to assist with diabetes care. I followed this for a bit, was bit skeptical if anyone would actually use it, and kind of wrote it off.

Inspired by my children playing with it,  I took a look back at the 5 finalists and the winner to the see design elements that may apply to other areas (especially mental health care).

Some of the common elements included…

Teacher:

All 5 finalists had some sort of forward facing, audio book style teaching about diabetes.  This was a different way to engage with diagnosis education.  Going to patient preference, somebody may prefer to hear education this way.

Symptom Tracking/Journaling:

All of the 5 finalists incorporated a way to track symptoms and journal. The winner even attached to a scale to monitor weight and foot size.  One of them mentioned the use of wearable tech.

Care Coordination:

A way to push this data to family, diabetes specialists, or anyone else from the care team.

Coaching/Learning Patterns:

Here is where things get a little tricky. Based on some questions in the teaching components, symptom tracking, and journalism; these apps can give feedback. They use technology like Natural Language Processing (quickly going through words and language to pick up patterns). A good example of this in mental health is researchers using voice pattern recognition look at speech for schizophrenia.  Also  Machine Learning technology can be used to turn those patterns in to actionable items.

A lot of these design elements are not all that dissimilar to text apps. But watching my children interact with Google Dot made me think if others would others find voice technology an engaging experience? More importantly would they also find voice an engaging experience for a healthcare encounter?

A quick Google scholar search yielded a study in rural Africa that found voice technology a powerful interface for families caring for their children.  But barriers such as access were noted. Another study indicated that interactive voice calls to assist with Smoking Cessation was an effective intervention. That people who engaged the longest had higher success rates. It doesn’t mention the factors that kept people engaged. That is probably the large question.

It made me ponder how voice technology can assist with symptom education for a teenager with ADHD? Can someone engage with voice to better track their symptoms of depression? It what other ways can voice be another aide to mental health treatment?

My interest in voice technology as an aide to healthcare has been peaked a bit. I look forward to seeing how this evolves but also interested in other people’s thoughts.  Please feel free to comment below or give me a shout on twitter at @stuckonsw.