1)Submit to Discussion 8 a post of at least 300 words discussing one of the following topics:
1) In this week’s lecture and discussion, explored decision support systems: what they are, how they work, and when they are most effective. For this discussion prompt, investigate decision support systems in an area in which you are interested (travel, medical diagnosis, crop planting, business) and report back about hat you have learned. What does this system help travelers/doctors/farmers/business people do? When is it effective? What decisions cannot be made by the DSS? When does it fail? You might need to do some outside research to answer this prompt. Please link to your sources and provide quotations, along with references, for ideas and quotations you take from someone else.
2) This week’s materials include an explanation about how Google search works and also Noble’s criticism of how Google search results conform to the hegemonic status quo that exists in the world. What, according to Noble, leads to these reproductions of existing biases? How can we fight against these? You might need to do some outside research to answer this question. Please link to your sources and provide quotations, along with references, for ideas and quotations you take from someone else.
3) Safiya Noble’s fascinating work notes that algorithms reproduce the existing hierarchies and biases in our society. Identify a case where a business or government entity uses an algorithm (policing, Netflix, mortgage companies, search engines) and explore the benefits of the application of the algorithm and also the detriments. If your example was previously performed by humans, how do algorithms and humans compare in the performance of these duties? You might need to do some outside research to answer this question. Please link to your sources and provide quotations, along with references, for ideas and quotations you take from someone else.
2) answer to the 2 paragraph one by one 150 word each
1)For this discussion, I chose a support system that many healthcare industries and companies have in their databases. The support system that I chose is called Clinical decision support systems or (CDSS) for short. I first began my research on this topic by looking into websites and articles the first source that I found is a webpage by the CDC, titled Implementing Clinical Decision Support Systems. When viewing this webpage I learned about how (CDSS) is used to assist healthcare workers with implementing clinical guidelines. “Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) are computer-based programs that analyze data within EHRs to provide prompts and reminders to assist health care providers in implementing evidence-based clinical guidelines at the point of care”. (CDSS) today is basically is used to help doctors and nurses get there information they need to get before seeing a patient, which information is brought to them by medical records or patient information. “CDSSs today are primarily used at the point-of-care, for the clinician to combine their knowledge with information or suggestions provided by the CDSS”. I found this fact when reading an article titled An overview of clinical decision support systems: benefits, risks, and strategies for success. In this article, I was able to find that medical workers basically use this support system to help them gather information on patients. Another great thing I found from this article was how (CDSS) has been used in many parts of the hospitals to help patients and doctors deal with hyperglycemia. “Among numerous examples, a CDSS for blood glucose measurement in the ICU was able to decrease the number of hypoglycemia events”.
The bad thing about support systems like this is that they usually get hacked not just because this system is used by doctors and nurses, but also because it contains information from millions of patients. I recently found an article that talks about how patients’ information was stolen from a hospital database that was using (CDSS) and that it was stolen at a University. The article is called California warns on massive ID theft, the article was made by Computerworld United States. “The state of California has warned residents that their personal data may have been stolen from computers at the University of California, Berkeley, after a database used by researchers there was compromised by hackers”. After reading this article I was able to learn that even a healthcare support system isn’t safe when it comes to keeping personal information or even secrecy that one share with their personal pediatricians. A bit into the article explains how CDSS is doing their best to help the 1.4 million patients whose information was stolen and that the FBI is working on helping with this information that was stolen. “Names, addresses, telephone, and Social Security numbers, and the birth dates of IHSS participants, could have been stolen by the malicious hackers, according to Carlos Ramos, assistant secretary at the CDSS”. Overall just like any other support system this system does fail and it can lead to information being stolen by hackers to use and sell your identity or personal information, but I also believe this support system helps the daily lives of our hospitals and medical buildings. I also believe that it relieves the stress of really doing hand to paper writing for issues and now all we have to do is have a computer support system clear a problem up within minutes.
Citations
Sutton, R. T., Pincock, D., Baumgart, D. C., Fedorak, R. N., & Kroeker, K. I. (2020, February 6). An overview of clinical decision support systems: Benefits, risks, and strategies for Success. Nature News. Retrieved March 16, 2022, from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-020-0221-y (Links to an external site.)
Human Services, U. S. D. of H. (2021, July 22). Implementing clinical decision support systems. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved March 16, 2022, from https://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/pubs/guides/best-practices/clinical-decision-support.htm#:~:text=Clinical%20decision%20support%20systems%20(CDSS,at%20the%20point%20of%20care (Links to an external site.).
Roberts, P. (2004, October 21). California warns on massive ID theft. Computerworld. Retrieved March 16, 2022, from https://www.computerworld.com/article/2567314/california-warns-on-massive-id-theft.html (Links to an external site.)
2)Hello,
For this disscussion post I chose to do an explanation about how Google search works and also Noble’s criticism of how Google search results conform to the hegemonic status quo that exists in the world. The developers at google describe their search algorithm as that Google is a completely automated search engine that employs web crawlers, which scour the internet on a daily basis in search of new sites to index. In reality, the great majority of the sites featured in our results are discovered and uploaded automatically by our web crawlers as they trawl the internet. With this algorithm in mind we can begin to look at how there may be some bias in the search engine algorithm. Safiya Noble is an assistant professor of communication at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism and the author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. Noble’s article talks about search engines in particular. However, it is fairly broad in scope, addressing search from the perspectives of race, gender, information, culture, history, and politics. The article discusses the issue then goes straight to the topic, providing just enough detail to comprehend her social critique before quickly turning a corner into another maze of sociopolitical nuances hidden beneath keywords, indexing, and cataloging. After reading her article I was stunned that certain words or phrases can lead you to specific links or URLs that are biased or sometimes racist, when the word searched has nothing to do with the results given. One way that I feel that can correct this issue is if google took another look at their algorithm and decided to make some changes to it where certain words or phrases connect more to the results given. For example, a quote taken straight from Nobles article she explains how “These are the details of what a search for “black girls” would yield for many years, despite that the words “porn,” “pornography,” or “sex” were not included in the search box. In the text for the first page of results, for example, the word “p-ssy,” as a noun, is used four times to describe black girls.” (Safiya,2018) . This to me was shocking and something the developers at Google can go back and look at to correct their algorithm so their search engine is less biased or Politically correct. Overall, I feel Google is a very reputable search engine but could take another look at the way their results are given.
Citations:
Google, Developers. “The Basics of How Search Works.” Google, Google Search Central, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/basics/how-search-works.
Ko, Amy J. “Noble’s ‘Algorithms of Oppression’ Indexes Search Engine Bias.” Medium, Bits and Behavior, 29 Nov. 2020, https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/nobles-algorithms-of-oppression-indexes-search-engine-bias-4ef63aba9742.
Noble, Safiya. “Google’s Algorithm: History of Racism against Black Women.” Time, Time, 26 Mar. 2018, https://time.com/5209144/google-search-engine-algorithm-bias-racism/.
