As artificial intelligence becomes a main fixture in everyday life, its entrenchment in the healthcare industry has raised some concerns.
According to Modern Healthcare, many medical professionals are concerned about the impact AI could have on health systems. While incorporating AI offers medical professionals a way to “streamline care and reduce administrative tasks,” some fear that without “appropriate guardrails” these changes “risk alienating their staff.”
Modern Healthcare reports that some healthcare providers have “adopted certain low-risk applications such as automating claim denial responses and ambient scribes, which many physicians say help them spend more time with patients by transcribing conversations, highlighting pertinent clinical notes, generating patient visit summaries, and simplifying coding.”
Chief of Medicine at LifeBridge Health, Esti Schabelman, emphasizes that “AI systems are only as good as the data they are trained on, and if that data is biased or unrepresentative, the resulting AI may perpetuate these biases.”
This is an important reminder as healthcare ventures further into the use of AI. While data quality and bias are significant concerns, even larger issues arise around data security and privacy. Because healthcare records hold vulnerable and highly confidential information, poorly managed AI systems could increase the possibility of breach.
As lawmakers work to understand and manage how AI systems can change how we control the privacy of personal data, it’s important to realize this struggle is not new. The need for data privacy is not a new concept, but rather one that has seen increased focus with AI’s evolution. “Ten years ago, most people thought about data privacy in terms of online shopping. They thought, ‘I don’t know if I care if these companies know what I buy and what I’m looking for, because sometimes it’s helpful,” Jennifer King, a fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, explained.
What has changed is the power that AI possesses and the potentially damaging consequences that it can have on healthcare. Patients face the possibility of sensitive data being exposed due to ill-managed AI system, which is a concern that should not be ignored.
While AI shows tremendous potential in advancing new, innovative treatments, as well as streamlining processes and cutting down wait times, Solidarity HealthShare cautions against the medical industry allowing AI to harm the person-to-person interactions that are essential for providing comprehensive, root-cause focused care. Solidarity proudly defends the dignity of all human persons and the need for greater transparency in the healthcare industry and hopes that any implementation of AI respects both goals.
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