Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare – Ethical, Privacy and Other Issues

Last week’s  Weekend Reading segment provided materials on the history of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as well as its current and future role in healthcare. While AI offers opportunities to improve healthcare quality and control costs, it raises ethical, data security, and other issues. AI systems are built using real data, which means the technology can inherit, hide and even magnify human biases that play a key role in health disparities. Privacy issues and protecting healthcare data systems from bad actors is a critical concern. Experts believe that AI issues such as these need to be addressed sooner, rather than later. 

On January 7, the Trump administration proposed a set of 10 Principles for the Stewardship of AI Applications, to guide future federal regulation of artificial intelligence used in medicine, transportation and other industries. The proposed AI guidelines are focused largely on encouraging innovation in artificial intelligence and making sure regulations don’t “needlessly” get in the way.  The guidance discusses some of the biggest concerns of AI ethicists but fails to offer steps to address the issues.