ETHICS of AI Adoption and Deployment in Health Care: Progress, Challenges, and Next Steps

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is increasingly being integrated into health care, offering a wide array of benefits. Currently, GenAI applications are useful in disease risk prediction and preventive care, diagnostics via imaging, artificial intelligence (AI)–assisted devices and point-of-care tools, drug discovery and design, patient and disease monitoring, remote monitoring and wearables, integration of multimodal data and personalized medicine, on-site and remote patient and disease monitoring and device integration, robotic surgery, and health system efficiency and workflow optimization, among other aspects of disease prevention, control, diagnosis, and treatment. Recent breakthroughs have led to the development of reliable and safer GenAI systems capable of handling the complexity of health care data. The potential of GenAI to optimize resource use and enhance productivity underscores its critical role in patient care. However, the use of AI in health is not without critical gaps and challenges, including (but not limited to) AI-related environmental concerns, transparency and explainability, hallucinations, inclusiveness and inconsistencies, cost and clinical workflow integration, and safety and security of data (ETHICS). In addition, the governance and regulatory issues surrounding GenAI applications in health care highlight the importance of addressing these aspects for responsible and appropriate GenAI integration. Building on AI’s promising start necessitates striking a balance between technical advancements and ethical, equity, and environmental concerns. Here, we highlight several ways in which the transformative power of GenAI is revolutionizing public health practice and patient care, acknowledge gaps and challenges, and indicate future directions for AI adoption and deployment.