WISH Report to Address Ethical Management of AI in Healthcare

The World Innovation Summit for Health

The World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH), an initiative of Qatar Foundation (QF), has announced plans to publish a report on the Ethics of AI in healthcare. The report will explore widely adopted AI practices in healthcare and emphasize the associated ethical challenges, particularly regarding medical accountability. It is scheduled for release ahead of WISH 2024, which will take place on November 13-14 at the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha. This report will serve as a basis for discussions at the summit, focusing on the ethical implications of increased AI use in healthcare. While the report will cover general ethical considerations, it will specifically address the relationship between AI and healthcare from an Islamic perspective.

Dr. Mohammed Ghaly, Professor of Islam and Biomedical Ethics and Head of the Research Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics (CILE) at the College of Islamic Studies (CIS), Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), part of QF, will be the lead author. During a panel discussion at the 17th World Congress of Bioethics in Doha on "The Role of Ethics in AI-Driven Healthcare," Dr. Ghaly confirmed that AI in healthcare will be a major topic at WISH 2024 and announced the forthcoming report.

Dr. Ghaly stated, “Both secular and religious moral traditions need to address the serious ethical challenges surrounding AI use in healthcare, including unequal access to technology, privacy and data protection, informed consent, and how these issues relate to the traditional values and etiquette governing the patient-physician relationship. Central to this is the question of accountability: who is responsible for errors when AI systems increasingly influence clinical decisions and patient outcomes? Our report will provide policy recommendations to address these concerns, impacting ethical deliberations on the patient-physician relationship in the AI era.”

The integration of AI in healthcare has significantly transformed the medical field, affecting areas such as electronic medical records (EMR), imaging, laboratory diagnostics, treatment methods, drug discovery, preventative and precision medicine, and extensive analysis of biological data. Despite this progress, there are many ethical challenges in managing these technologies. Accountability is further complicated by the complexity and opacity of AI algorithms, which can obscure the decision-making process and diffuse blame.

Maha El Akoum, Manager of Policy and Content at WISH, commented, “As AI adoption in healthcare continues rapidly, regulating it to ensure medical practice remains ethical and equitable becomes crucial. WISH is taking a leading role, in collaboration with HBKU, to address this pressing issue, which is essential for fostering trust and ensuring ethical integrity. We look forward to publishing the report before WISH 2024 and to the valuable discussions it will stimulate at our November summit.”

 

Source: The Peninsula Qatar