Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

Artificial Intelligence

• The panellists pointed out that AI is an area of strategic importance for Europe and that AI-based solutions can speed up the digital transformation of health and care.

• Without making any announcement, the Commission listed the measures that have already been taken to support AI solutions in healthcare through research, shared data infrastructure and legislative frameworks. In particular, the European Union is currently funding AI-based research projects related to modelling and prediction of disease and in-silico clinical trials and decision support systems for diagnostics and treatments

Big data and health

• Overall, all the speakers claimed that cooperation for data sharing must be fostered in the European Union and even globally.

• The challenge to create the conditions ensuring the correct use of AI-based databases, and guarantee consistency, quality and intelligibly has been stressed.

• The key challenges identified by the Commission are as follows:

• data protection and security: search for consent and protect sensitive data;
• safety and liability of IA: ensure data quality, increase reliability, sort out responsibilities;
• ethics and governance: ensure privacy and adequate management of data and processes.

Inform/Educate about AI

The panel was of the view that there is a need to inform citizens about the potential of artificial intelligence to mitigate bias and increase trust.  

A White Paper on speeding drug discovery with AI and Big data published by Hewlett Packard Enterprise was also shared with the audience. The key elements of this White Paper are as follows:

• Current processes for drug discovery are time consuming and expensive;

• A combination of cutting-edge technologies will define the future of drug discovery;

• Greater hardware power will result in the ability to model further drug advances before moving to clinical trials;

• Researchers are hoping to someday use computers to simulate the functioning of the human cell, down to subatomic level in order to perform simulations of how different biological compounds work in the human body which will aim to reduce time and cost required to identify drugs for clinical trials.