As the use of artificial intelligence grows in the healthcare arena, delegates at the 2024 Digital Health Society Summit held earlier this week were told that there is a critical need to prioritise need over greed.
Organised by the ECHAlliance, the conference heard from chair emeritus at the Centre for Health, Innovation, Policy & Digital Health at the Indian Institute of Management Raipur, Rajendra Gupta, who has organised a new global campaign called Data first, AI later.
“There is the global north’s greed for data and there is the global south’s need for data,” Professor Gupta said. “There has to be a balance between that greed and need.”
He was highly critical of the current situation where “big tech collects data and then gives it back to use in products that we have to buy”.
“I think we have to be abundantly clear about the end goals so that the extraction doesn’t lead to extortion,” he said.
Prof Gupta is spearheading the new Data first, AI later campaign, which was launched in May. It is being driven by a collective of international experts and policy influencers and “aims to shape a future of healthcare advancements built on a foundation of data integrity, fairness, and a focus on human well-being”.
It is calling on stakeholders to prioritise data integrity and quality to ensure that AI in healthcare is developed and deployed responsibly, ethically and sustainably.
“We are creating global networks to get this rolled down and to create a culture of data integrity, integration and then intelligence, not intelligence first,” he said.
Prof Gupta’s views were supported by Phil Webb, CEO of Health and Wellbeing 360, which specialises in leveraging data science and R&D to improve environmental quality and health by generating high-quality data to inform the development of standards and strategies.
“You have to get the balance right,” Mr Webb said. “Are you doing this for the benefit of people or are you doing this to make money? There’s a balance to be had in that but that balance is totally wrong at the moment.”
He said the current situation where “dominant commercial factors producing products that people have to buy, commercialising information that other people own, is an upside down system”.
“The interoperability system in the NHS, for example, has largely been driven by companies providing data platforms and electronic patient systems and administration systems, all of which are competing on a commercial perspective rather than looking at the actual value of the data that’s contained there for the benefit of people,” he said.
“If these systems were designed for the benefit of people, you’d have seen much more interoperable systems being embedded in large NHS trusts and across the country.
“It hasn’t happened because it has become a commercial issue, not a people issue, even though [the NHS is a] public sector [entity] and should have a public sector ethos in the delivery of this, it hasn’t worked out like that.
“Largely the word public has been lost in the commercialisation of systems and processes to manage data and that is a failing of the system and it is to the detriment of the public that [the NHS] serves.”
As a contrast, he highlighted the interoperability in environmental data collection.
“[Health and Wellbeing 360] is working very carefully to ensure that the collection of environmental level data, both for indoor environmental quality and outdoor environmental quality, is done to standards that are published so that people have to stick to them at the beginning.
“We are adopting a data first approach. We’re looking at standards around the hardware that is used to collect this information, how it’s collected, how it’s warehoused and how it’s used.
“It is an example of looking at a big player in population level health and trying to ensure, from the roots, that the data is developed in a specific way with standards around it so it can be used to support population health and well-being.”
Mr Webb said countries that are not as advanced in developing their digital health infrastructure should learn from the mistakes of the UK and other Western countries.
“If I had the God-like ability to wipe the slate clean, we would first develop frameworks, systems and standards for data collection that would ensure and enshrine good quality data and the use of data equitably and effectively across systems.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have that ability. Other countries can learn very quickly from the mistakes we’ve made and ensure that their systems and frameworks don’t repeat the quite corrosive patterns of data dissemination and the use of technologies that Western populations have adopted around commercialism.
“There should be an ability for us to use human knowledge for the benefit of everyone, irrespective of race, geopolitical region, etcetera. This is really an opportunity for us as human beings to create good for human beings across the world using advanced digital technology.”
