Does the UK’s liver transplant matching algorithm systematically exclude younger patients?

Seemingly minor technical decisions can have life-or-death effects

By Arvind Narayanan, Angelina Wang, Sayash Kapoor, and Solon Barocas Predictive algorithms are used in many life-or-death situations. In the paper Against Predictive Optimization, we argued that the use of predictive logic for making decisions about people has recurring, inherent flaws, and should be rejected in many cases. A wrenching case study comes from the UK’s liver allocation algorithm, which appears to discriminate by age, with some younger patients seemingly unable to receive a transplant, no matter how ill. What went wrong here? Can it be fixed? Or should health systems avoid…

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