AI and Automated systems and the Right to Health - Revisiting law accounting for the exploitation of users’ preferences and values (AICARE)

This project researches the impact of the implementation of AI in healthcare and seeks solutions to adapt the legal system in order to ensure respect for fundamental values. It is well known that a functioning and fair healthcare system is vital for our society. Health emergencies lead to personal tragedies and paralyze the economy with dire social consequences. AI can help finding new cures and treatments or better adapt these to individual patients. It can improve planning and timely responses to care needs and optimize the quality of healthcare, reducing costs, liberating medical staff from administrative and routine tasks and allow increased participation of patients.
Growing use of digital technology in healthcare and pilot AI projects are already a reality in Sweden. However, the implementation of AI in healthcare faces legal difficulties, because there are no specific laws and there is considerable uncertainty on how to apply existing rules to new technology in a way that does not stifle innovation and guarantees that AI healthcare solutions will be available to all and accessible without discrimination; that these will be acceptable to patients and that quality standards prevent risks such as privacy breaches, errors, malfunctions or malicious acts.
AICARE, approaches this problem by examining how AI impacts the right to health in a Swedish context. The project scrutinizes key elements of the right to health - availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality, and its interface with other fundamental rights, while accounting for the empirical insights of patients and healthcare professional’s preference and values. It investigates how AI challenges the existing legal and ethical norms that regulate healthcare in Sweden, and will propose solutions on how to improve rules (through revision, reinterpretation) or complement them by new measures in a manner that promotes technological advances, whilst guaranteeing adequate patient protection.

A functioning and fair healthcare system is vital for our society. Health emergencies lead to personal tragedies and paralyze the economy with dire social consequences. AI can help finding new cures and treatments or better adapt these to individual patients. It can improve planning and timely responses to care needs and optimize the quality of healthcare, reducing costs, liberating medical staff from administrative and routine tasks and allow increased participation of patients.
Growing use of digital technology in healthcare and pilot AI projects are already a reality. However, the implementation of AI in healthcare faces legal difficulties, because there are no specific laws and there is considerable uncertainty on how to apply existing rules to new technology. The project - AICARE – will research the impact of the implementation of AI in healthcare and seeks solutions to adapt the legal system in order to ensure respect for fundamental values. In short, how to apply the law in a way that does not stifle innovation and guarantees that AI healthcare solutions will be available to all and accessible without discrimination; that these will be acceptable to patients and that quality standards prevent risks such as privacy breaches, errors, malfunctions or malicious acts.