Dark Patterns, Electronic Medical Records, and the Opioid Epidemic
This highlights a critical problem in healthcare where dark patterns exploit clinicians to worsen the opioid epidemic, with incremental insights into interface manipulation.
The paper investigates how a drug company and an electronic medical record vendor colluded to use dark patterns in medical record interfaces to increase prescriptions of extended-release opioids, which have contributed to nearly half a million additional deaths over two decades, and provides recommendations to address this issue.
Dark patterns have emerged as a set of methods to exploit cognitive biases to trick users to make decisions that are more aligned with a third party than to their own. These patterns can have consequences that might range from inconvenience to global disasters. We present a case of a drug company and an electronic medical record vendor who colluded to modify the medical record's interface to induce clinicians to increase the prescription of extended-release opioids, a class of drugs that has a high potential for addiction and has caused almost half a million additional deaths in the past two decades. Through this case, we present the use and effects of dark patterns in healthcare, discuss the current challenges, and offer some recommendations on how to address this pressing issue.