Best Practices

EIT Health: AI and Ethics in the Health Innovation Community

  • Paul TIMMERS profile
    Paul TIMMERS
    23 November 2019 - updated 1 year ago
  • 5 comments
    Total votes: 1

An extensive survey was run by the EIT Health amongst startups and innovators. The survey is one-to-one with the AI & Ethics guidelines. In addition a set of case studies has been collected. All was presented and discussed at the World Health Summit in Berlin, 27 October 2019. An extensive report about the survey and cases and with recommendations is available. An op-ed was published in Science|Business.

PDF icon1129803_eit_health_whs_report_final.pdf

Tags: 
EIT healthhealthageingrecommendationscasessurvey

Comments

Log in to post comments
Sachin GAUR's picture
Sachin GAUR,
25/11/2019 02:42

Dear Paul, 

Thanks for sharing. I believe for healthcare especially regulation is needed to bring confidence among clinicians for uptake of AI. We have seen some very interesting examples of AI systems being used in parallel with the human experts. It is interesting to see the false positives and negatives in a clinical setting and the possible implication of the same on the patient's life if the human expertise was not available and vice versa. (so both approaches have their shortcomings and together they seem to be an improved system). 

I can share more with you offline exact examples on these AI vis-a-vis Human expert in clinical setting. 

 Thanks 

-Sachin 

Total votes: 0
Norbert JASTROCH's picture
Norbert JASTROCH,
23/11/2019 19:46

 Dear Paul Timmers,

The central problem, that of the balance between regulation and innovation, seems to be somehow similar to a problem discussed in A. Nassehi et al, The Strength of Weak Procedures, Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie 48(3), de Gruyter Oldenbourg 2019, https://doi.org/10.1515/zfsoz-2019-0015 on the subject of organ donation. The problem they discuss in the context of organ allocation for transplantation is that of fundamentally diverging perspectives which make a specific question unresolvable in a general sense.

They argue that instead of trying to force obligatory political decision, it is more promising to organize an institutionalized permanent ethical reflection on the subject under consideration. 

Taking such an approach and transferring it to the issue of balancing regulation and innovation in the field of AI may offer a way how to deal with the fundamental perspective differences you address.

Regards, Norbert Jastroch

 

 

Total votes: 0
Paul TIMMERS's picture
Paul TIMMERS,
24/11/2019 09:24

Dear Norbert, very valuable comment, thanks! As regards the governance perspective and coming out of our survey and case studies is the practice of post-market surveillance in the medical devices and pharma field. Combined with pre-market impact assessment this suggests at least two governance mechanisms that can be institutionalized, i.e. mandated by law. These would well go together with the institutionalized ethical reflection that you refer to (checks & balances) in order to create more space for responsible and fast innovation.

Best regards, Paul

Total votes: 0
Norbert JASTROCH's picture
Norbert JASTROCH,
26/11/2019 18:32

Dear Paul,

one could expect these three elements - proactive regulation, reactive evaluation, and steady ethical reflection exercise - to build a promising innovation pathway. It's all about combining them economically reasonable, and institutionalize them in a prudent way. 

Kindly, Norbert 

 

Total votes: 1
Paul TIMMERS's picture
Paul TIMMERS,
23/11/2019 09:51

You can also find information about the World Health Summit debate on AI & ethics.

Total votes: 0