Mitigating The Effects Of Gender Bias In Clinical Trials - Zenger News

It is an open secret that women are underrepresented in clinical trials of new pharmaceuticals and other medical treatments. This has a significant impact on the female half of the population. A new article in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association by computer scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, in collaboration with Plia Gillis of Tel Aviv University and Eric Horvitz of Microsoft Research, describes the problems caused by this bias and presents a machine-learning remedy. "Nowadays, we know that different population groups react differently to a given treatment – in particular, women can have a different reaction than men to a treatment," said Shunit Agmon, the PhD candidate who conducted the research with Technion alumna and visiting professor Kira Radinsky. "For example, Zolpidem, a drug used to treat sleeping problems, clears more slowly in women and therefore it is important to prescribe a smaller dose for women than for men -- which was discovered only after the drug was released to the market," said Agmon.