Event Date: October 30, 2019
Time: 8:30-10:00 am
Location: Mid-America Regional Council, 600 Broadway Blvd #200, Kansas City, MO 64105, USA
Admission: Free

For this month’s meeting of the KC Digital Drive Health Innovation Team, we will be looking at ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence (AI) in health.

AI systems are becoming increasingly prevalent in the world of healthcare. These complex tools have great potential to improve health outcomes, organizational efficiency, and patient experience, but they also present certain risks. AI systems have been shown to contribute to the reproduction of systemic bias and discrimination in non-healthcare activities like hiring and sentencing, and it is not unreasonable to assume the same could happen in the healthcare setting, a place where constituents are especially vulnerable and where trust is critical. Addressing these risks will require an understanding of the ethical dimensions of AI in healthcare and a community-wide effort  to develop and implement AI systems in healthcare in an ethically responsible way. To this end, Cerner has partnered with the Center for Practical Bioethics to conduct a community-based initiative exploring these ethical dimensions and improving adherence to a broadly accepted ethical framework. We will discuss the preliminary findings from a recent KC based Ethical AI workshop, along with recommendations for next steps and future initiatives.

Takeaways:

  • Design, development, and implementation of AI systems for healthcare application all have important ethical dimensions.
  • A community-based approach will be critical for identifying and addressing the full range of risks experienced by various stakeholders.
  • Those designing, developing and implementing AI systems in healthcare have a responsibility to create and follow an ethical framework across their products and services.

PRESENTERS:

Dr. Lindsey Jarrett is a Social Scientist at Cerner dedicated to clinical research and has over a decade of experience working in program evaluation across the KC community. It is through this work across the public, private and academic sectors that has created the expertise to evaluate products and services to ensure usability of all people.

Matthew Pjecha from the Center for Practical Bioethics has a background in ethics, philosophy of science, and studies of science, technology, and society. His research has focused on the intersection of emerging technology, healthcare, and policy. He has been working on AI and healthcare ethics specifically for about three years.

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Every month, we bring together a group of health care stakeholders to learn and share about technology and innovation projects happening in the region–and occasionally related topics from outside the Greater Kansas City area. Our stakeholders include hospitals and the health care system, city and state government officials, health IT firms and other corporate partners, startups working in health and wellness, and other civic organizations. The meetings are open, though not widely broadcast. They generally happen on the last Wednesday of the month, 8:30-10:00 am at Mid-America Regional Council (MARC).
We send out an email agenda and calendar invite to this stakeholder list, which we loosely call the Health Innovation Team. If you wish to be added to the email list, please send a note to jfitzpatrick@kcdigitaldrive.org.