Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 20th Oct.World Health Agency on Thursday issued a call for better regulations over the use and potential mis-use of artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry.
Its new publication emphasized the importance of establishing safe and effective AI systems and fostering dialogue about using it as a positive tool, bringing together developers, regulators, manufacturers, health workers, and patients.
WHO recognizes the potential AI has to enhance health outcomes by strengthening clinical trials, improving medical diagnosis, and supplementing healthcare professionals’ knowledge and competencies, with the increasing availability of healthcare data and rapid progress in analytic techniques.
AI systems could potentially access sensitive personal information, necessitating robust legal and regulatory frameworks for safeguarding privacy, security, and integrity when using health data.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General said “Artificial intelligence holds great promise for health, but also comes with serious challenges, including unethical data collection, cybersecurity threats and amplifying biases or misinformation”.
WHO stressed the importance of transparency and documentation, risk management, and externally validating data on the growing need to responsibly manage the rapid rise of AI health technologies,
“This new guidance will support countries to regulate AI effectively, to harness its potential, whether in treating cancer or detecting tuberculosis, while minimising the risks,” said Mr. Ghebreyesus.
The agency noted that the challenges posed by important, complex regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Actin the United States are addressed with an emphasis on understanding the scope of jurisdiction and consent requirements, in service of privacy and data protection.
WHO said that AI systems are complex and depend not only on the code they are built with but also on the data they are trained on. Better regulation can help manage the risks of AI amplifying biases in training data.
It can be difficult for AI models to accurately represent the diversity of populations, leading to biases, inaccuracies, or even failure.
To help mitigate these risks, regulations can be used to ensure that the attributes such as gender, race and ethnicity – are reported and datasets are intentionally made representative.
The report stressed that a commitment to quality data is vital to ensuring systems do not amplify biases and errors.
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