AI can transform healthcare around the world, but it will only succeed if ethics and human rights are at the heart of its development and implementation.
That’s the upshot of a recently released first global report on AI from the World Health Organization (WHO). Titled Ethics and governance of artificial intelligence for health, the report is the product of two years of consultations with experts around the world and cites six guiding principles as indispensable to effective AI development and utilization.
Those principles are:
Protect human autonomy: Meaning humans should remain in control of healthcare systems and medical decisions while privacy and confidentiality should be protected.
Promote human well-being and safety and the public interest: AI designers need to satisfy regulatory requirements for safety, accuracy and efficacy for well-defined use cases or indications.
Ensure transparency, explainability and intelligibility: Sufficient, readily accessible information should be published or documented before the design or deployment of an AI technology.
Foster responsibility and accountability: It is the responsibility of stakeholders to ensure AI is used under appropriate conditions and by appropriately trained people.
Ensure inclusiveness and equity: AI for healthcare must be designed to encourage the widest possible equitable use and access.
Promote responsive, sustainable AI: Designers, developers and users should continuously and transparently assess AI applications during actual use to determine whether AI responds adequately and appropriately to expectations and requirements.
“Like all new technology, artificial intelligence holds enormous potential for improving the health of millions of people around the world, but like all technology it can also be misused and cause harm,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, in a statement. “This important new report provides a valuable guide for countries on how to maximize the benefits of AI, while minimizing its risks and avoiding its pitfalls.”
The report notes that while AI can be used to improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis and screening for diseases, to assist with clinical care, and to strengthen health research and drug development, among other things, the report cautions against overestimating the benefits of AI for health, especially when this occurs at the expense of core investments and strategies required to achieve universal health coverage.
It also points out that opportunities are linked to challenges and risks, including unethical collection and use of health data; biases encoded in algorithms, and risks of AI to patient safety, cybersecurity, and the environment.
Ultimately, the report says, guided by existing laws and human rights obligations, as well as new laws and policies that enshrine ethical principles, governments, providers, and designers must work together to address ethics and human rights concerns at every stage of an AI technology’s design, development, and deployment.
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