This week the EU released its long-anticipated regulations around AI. The wide-reaching regulations cover everything from its use in mass surveillance to the manipulation of people, and is designed to protect the fundamental rights of citizens while also allowing firms to remain competitive in the face of American and Chinese competition.
While a comment from the US Federal Trade Commission issued on the 19th of April may have slightly more teeth in the short-term, we have seen with GDPR the influence the EU has on global regulation.
Both it and the EU’s new regulations signal a sea change in the government’s approach to AI and herald a more aggressive manner towards technologies that are deemed to be harmful to society. The EU’s new rules, for instance, outlaw some of the applications of AI that are deemed most invasive, such as any that exploit mental vulnerabilities or manipulate our behavior.
“Artificial intelligence must serve people, and therefore artificial intelligence must always comply with people’s rights,” said Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, in a speech ahead of the release.
AI in healthcare
The regulations largely look past healthcare as an area of concern, which will be welcome news for bodies such as EIT Health, which recently published a new report outlining the importance of AI in healthcare.
The report highlights the dire need for a technological revolution in healthcare to help the healthcare workforce grapple with the ever-increasing demands placed upon it.
The report comes amidst clear societal changes, such as a changing demographic landscape that will see over 438 million people over 65 in China by 2050, by which time over 20% of Japanese people will be over 80. A similar picture is unfolding in the EU, where nearly one in five citizens today is over 65.
“The greatest achievement in the history of mankind and all we can say is, is it going to bankrupt Medicare,” MIT AgeLab’s Joseph Coughlin famously remarked.
Meeting the demand
The report builds on a series of roundtable discussions with entrepreneurs and medtech experts from across Europe on the role AI can play in meeting the changing demands of healthcare today. The paper highlights a number of key areas that will need to be addressed at both the EU and the national level to ensure that the potential of AI is met.
Jan-Philipp Beck, CEO at EIT Health says “The outcomes of the AI Think Tank Report has given us clear and consistent messages on how to drive AI and technology forward within European healthcare systems. We already know that AI has the potential to transform healthcare, but we need to work quickly and collaboratively to build it into current European healthcare structures.”
“The challenge of the pandemic has undoubtedly helped accelerate growth, adoption and scaling of AI, as stakeholders have fought to deliver care both rapidly and remotely. However, this momentum needs to be maintained to ensure that benefits to healthcare systems are embedded long-term and help them to prepare for the future – something which will benefit all of us.”
While the recommendations from the roundtables include fairly benign things, such as better sharing of best practice, improving education and skills, and the development of value-based financial models, there was also consistent concern from stakeholders around the general lack of progress being made around the ethical aspects of AI in healthcare, including transparent logic and consistent maintainment of user privacy and control over their health data.
That’s not to say, of course, that there haven’t been discussions in these areas, but at a time when regulators are clearly beginning to move on AI, there remains precious little progress on the issues that will ultimately determine how successful any roll-out of AI in healthcare will be.
