PMAC 2020
Parallel Session 3.2
Artificial Intelligence and Digital Health Opportunities and Risks
Saturday, 1st February 2020
Ashish Jha, John Wong, Pradeep Haldar, Parry Aftab
Side Meeting
Opening Session
Plenary Session 0
Plenary Session 1
Parallel Session 1.2
Parallel Session 1.4
Plenary Session 2
Parallel Session 2.1
Parallel Session 2.2
Parallel Session 2.3
Parallel Session 2.5
Parallel Session 3.2
New technologies and digital innovation could revolutionize health care by becoming a tool that could overcome the challenges faced for the progress toward UHC. Various evidences have proven that usage of artificial intelligence will allow improvement of the wellbeing of an individual or a population, decreasing the cost of health services, increasing the patient awareness of their own welfare with the health system, and also improving the health provider experience which will lead to better service deliveries.
However, such innovations are not without any shortcomings. For instances, there may be bias in the algorithm system due to insufficient amount of data collected, risks of breakdown of an already fragile system, the concern on equitable access, cost of the technologies and obstacle on property rights, and importantly ethical concerns and risks regarding patients’ confidentiality. This session suggested solutions, including through implementing correct data set, innovate new approach for governance and regulations, new model for thinking about ethics, and lastly start a collaboration with NGOs, co-hosts of events, medical doctors, medical students, nurses, practitioners, and providers, but leave WHO as the last one.
Artificial intelligence (AI) may be able to help with misdiagnosis and can outperform human capabilities in terms of visual identification in 5-10 years to come. On the other hand, current AI have not reached the desired optimal performance and furthermore general public have the tendencies to resist change in how they usually do things so adapting the technology will be challenging. All things considered, the innovations and artificial intelligence have their own merits and shortcomings and need to be careful on utilizing it.
