Participation is The Medicine For AI Healthcare, But It Needs To Be Real [Guest Essay]

Newsletter Edition #357 [The Curated Primer]

Readers,

The race to govern AI in healthcare has been slow, not dissimilar to the pace to keep up with the wider applications of this epochal technology. The health sector is one of the biggest adopters of AI.

In our edition today, scholars working at the intersection of human rights and digital health, bring you an urgent commentary on the need for participatory approaches in the design and development, through to deployment and governance of the AI in the health ecosystem. The WHO is currently working on the Global Strategy on Digital Health (GSDH) 2028-2033.

The authors urge that "meaningful participation in AI governance faces a structural obstacle: although AI policy is a matter of democratic governance, it inherits technical barriers associated from the AI industry." They urge building literacy in two directions: public understanding of AI, and public familiarity with how policy processes work.

We hope you find this as illuminating as I did.

Also find below, our jobs board, a round up of openings and opportunities in global health and beyond. And a curation on recommended reading.

Finally, sharing a recent piece I wrote for Think Global Health: World Health Assembly Recap: Financial Crunch, Affected Mandates, and Future Leadership.

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Priti

Priti Patnaik, Founder & Publisher, Geneva Health Files

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I. GUEST ESSAY

Participation is The Medicine For AI Healthcare, But It Needs To Be Real

By Michael Strange & Sara (Meg) Davis: Co-Chairs, HealthAI Participatory AI working group

Strange is an Associate Professor and Co-Director of Citizen Health (CzH), Malmö University, Sweden. Michael.strange@mau.se; Davis is a Professor, Digital Health and Rights, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM), University of Warwick UK. Sara.davis@warwick.ac.uk. (See other members below.)

The World Health Organization is currently drafting its next Global Strategy on Digital Health(GSDH) 2028-2033 .As a group of public health professionals, AI developers, policymakers, patient advocates, industry representatives, and academics in the social and computer sciences working together in the HealthAI Community of Practice, we have seen that all-too-often visions for digital health miss a key ingredient. For AI to benefit human health and protect population sovereignty, governments and insurance firms need to use their purchasing power and other authority to centre participatory approaches in the design and development, through to deployment and governance of the AI in the health ecosystem. These principles inform a set of action points stated below.