AI and Automated Systems and the Right to Health – Revisiting Law Accounting for the Exploitation of Users Preferences and Values

It is hoped that artificial intelligence will provide us with better healthcare. However, to maintain patient safety, a review is needed to take a fresh look at the interpretation of the law. Ana Nordberg, a law researcher, has received SEK 6 million within the framework of the national research programme WASP-HS to anticipate pitfalls and present a proposal for measures.

Big data in combination with self-learning algorithms is gradually changing our society. This also applies to healthcare, which is expected to be transformed due to factors such as more qualified decision-making support that can rapidly propose both diagnosis and treatment.

How are physicians to respond to the computer’s recommendations? Who is to have access to the patient records and in what way? How do we ensure that AI-based healthcare is available to everyone, without discrimination?

These and other questions are focused on in a new research project that has been granted SEK 6 million by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation and the Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation, which last year initiated the national research programme WASP-HS with an aim to examine opportunities and challenges resulting from the shift in technology.

The project manager Ana Nordberg is a law researcher at Lund University. Her colleagues on the project are both from Uppsala University; Jennifer Viberg Johansson, doctor of medical science and Santa Slokenberga, doctor of medical law. A doctoral student will also be employed. Ana Nordberg’s own research examines how new technology affects existing norms and laws.

The recommendations that the researchers arrive at are intended for legislators and courts as well as those who develop and use the technologies. Everyone benefits from stable rules and regulations to ensure confidence and investment in technical development. In addition, patients should accept and trust the new healthcare methods.

Another issue that is becoming increasingly important is how the right to healthcare is to be balanced against the growing requirement for private ownership of data regarding, for example, business secrets, and healthcare technology and patents.