32 RTAIM Seminar: "Informing or Influencing? Clinical Decision Support Systems, Trust and Autonomy in Multiple Sclerosis: The PRIMUS Case"

Miranda Boldrini

#32 Miranda Boldrini [Link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3830997416363152?p=ElBzcdBR1iKqAOUSVJ | ID Teams: 383 099 741 636 315 2    | Password: eX3YZ3mf]

30 November 2026 | 3:00pm - 4.30pm (Lisbon Time Zone)

Informing or Influencing? Clinical Decision Support Systems, Trust and Autonomy in Multiple Sclerosis: The PRIMUS Case

#Seminar 31: When an AI decision-support tool enters the conversation between a physician and a patient about treatment, what does it mean to respect the patient’s autonomy, and whom, or what, does the patient trust? This talk examines these questions through a case study: PRIMUS, a decision-support tool for multiple sclerosis that shows neurologists and patients, in the form of curves, how the disease of comparable patients has evolved under different long-term treatments. The tool is being studied in a clinical trial in France, and its designers expect it to support the discussion with patients, including those who refuse treatment. This expectation raises a classical question of clinical ethics in a new form: when such curves are shown to a reluctant patient, do they inform her or influence her, and where does the line fall? Combining conceptual analysis with ethnographic fieldwork conducted before the tool’s deployment, I argue for a relational approach, informed by the ethics of care, which treats trust and the clinician’s responsibility as conditions of the patient’s autonomy, alongside access to information.

Short bio: Miranda Boldrini is a postdoctoral researcher in the ethics of AI in healthcare at the Centre François Viète, Nantes University (France). Within the PRIMUS project, she is part of the team conducting the qualitative study on the use of a clinical decision-support tool for multiple sclerosis. Her work combines moral philosophy, care ethics and ethnographic fieldwork.