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Current Research

Various specialties in medicine have shown an increase in research regarding AI. As the novel coronavirus ravages through the globe, the United States is estimated to invest more than $2 billion in AI related healthcare research over the next 5 years, more than 4 times the amount spent in 2019 ($463 million)

Implications

The use of AI is predicted to decrease medical costs as there will be more accuracy in diagnosis and better predictions in the treatment plan as well as more prevention of disease.

Other future uses for AI include Brain-computer Interfaces (BCI) which are predicted to help those with trouble moving, speaking or with a spinal cord injury. The BCIs will use AI to help these patients move and communicate by decoding neural activates.

Regulation

While research on the use of AI in healthcare aims to validate its efficacy in improving patient outcomes before its broader adoption, its use may nonetheless introduce several new types of risk to patients and healthcare providers, such as algorithmic bias, Do not resuscitate implications, and other machine morality issues. These challenges of the clinical use of AI has brought upon potential need for regulations.

Currently, there are regulations pertaining to the collection of patient data. This includes policies such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) and the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) . The GDPR pertains to patients within the EU and details the consent requirements for patient data use when entities collect patient healthcare data. Similarly, HIPPA protects healthcare data from patient records in the United States . In May 2016, the White House announced its plan to host a series of workshops and formation of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Subcommittee on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. In October 2016, the group published The National Artificial Intelligence Research and Development Strategic Plan, outlining its proposed priorities for Federally-funded AI research and development (within government and academia). The report notes a strategic R&D plan for the subfield of health information technology is in development stages.

A man speaking at a GDPR compliance workshop at the 2019 Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

The only agency that has expressed concern is the FDA. Bakul Patel, the Associate Center Director for Digital Health of the FDA, is quoted saying in May 2017:

“We're trying to get people who have hands-on development experience with a product's full life cycle. We already have some scientists who know artificial intelligence and machine learning, but we want complementary people who can look forward and see how this technology will evolve.”

The joint ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H) has built a platform for the testing and benchmarking of AI applications in health domain. As of November 2018, eight use cases are being benchmarked, including assessing breast cancer risk from histopathological imagery, guiding anti-venom selection from snake images, and diagnosing skin lesions.

Ethical Concerns

Data Collection

In order to effectively train Machine Learning and use AI in healthcare, massive amounts of data must be gathered. Acquiring this data, however, comes at the cost of patient privacy in most cases and is not well received publicly. For example, a survey conducted in the UK estimated that 63% of the population is uncomfortable with sharing their personal data in order to improve artificial intelligence technology . The scarcity of real, accessible patient data is a hindrance that deters the progress of developing and deploying more artificial intelligence in healthcare.

Automation

According to a recent study, AI can replace up to 35% of jobs in the UK within the next 10 to 20 years . However, of these jobs, it was concluded that AI has not eliminated any healthcare jobs so far. Though if AI were to automate healthcare related jobs, the jobs most susceptible to automation would be those dealing with digital information, radiology, and pathology, as opposed to those dealing with doctor to patient interaction .

Automation can provide benefits alongside doctors as well. It is expected that doctors who take advantage of AI in healthcare will provide greater quality healthcare than doctors and medical establishments who do not . AI will likely not completely replace healthcare workers but rather give them more time to attend to their patients. AI may avert healthcare worker burnout and cognitive overload

AI will ultimately help contribute to progression of societal goals which include better communication, improved quality of healthcare, and autonomy .

Bias

Since AI makes decisions solely on the data it receives as input, it is important that this data represents accurate patient demographics. In a hospital setting, patients do not have full knowledge of how predictive algorithms are created or calibrated. Therefore, these medical establishments can unfairly code their algorithms to discriminate against minorities and prioritize profits rather than providing optimal care .

There can also be unintended bias in these algorithms that can exacerbate social and healthcare inequities Since AI’s decisions are a direct reflection of its input data, the data it receives must have accurate representation of patient demographics. White males are overly represented in medical data sets . Therefore, having minimal patient data on minorities can lead to AI making more accurate predictions for majority populations, leading to unintended worse medical outcomes for minority populations . Collecting data from minority communities can also lead to medical discrimination. For instance, HIV is a prevalent virus among minority communities and HIV status can be used to discriminate against patients .  However, these biases are able to be eliminated through careful implementation and a methodical collection of representative data.