Ethical Challenges and Opportunities of AI in End-of-Life Palliative Care: Integrative Review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly integrated into palliative medicine, offering opportunities to improve quality, efficiency, and patient-centeredness in end-of-life care. However, its use raises complex ethical issues, including privacy, equity, dehumanization, and decision-making dilemmas. OBJECTIVE: We aim to critically analyze the main ethical implications of AI in end-of-life palliative care and examine the benefits and risks. We propose strategies for ethical and responsible implementation. METHODS: We conducted an integrative review of studies published from 2020 to 2025 in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, identified through systematic searches in PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Inclusion criteria were studies addressing AI in palliative medicine focusing on ethical implications or patient experience. Two reviewers independently performed study selection and data extraction, resolving discrepancies by consensus. The quality of the papers was assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklist and the Hawker et al tool. RESULTS: Six key themes emerged: (1) practical applications of AI, (2) communication and AI tools, (3) patient experience and humanization, (4) ethical implications, (5) quality of life perspectives, and (6) challenges and limitations. While AI shows promise for improving efficiency and personalization, consolidated real-world examples of efficiency and equity remain scarce. Key risks include algorithmic bias, cultural insensitivity, and the potential for reduced patient autonomy. CONCLUSIONS: AI can transform palliative care, but implementation must be patient-centered and ethically grounded. Robust policies are needed to ensure equity, privacy, and humanization. Future research should address data diversity, social determinants, and culturally sensitive approaches.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.016 | 0.065 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.010 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".