The ethical and legal challenges of using generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare were discussed during the latest instalment of the Intersection of Law & Medicine series at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar (WCM-Q).  

A panel of experts explored the generative AI tools available to healthcare professionals, the legal and ethical risks involved, and the limitations of laws regulating their usage.

The event, titled Automated Healthcare: ChatGPT, Bing, Bard & the Law of Generative AI, was coordinated and delivered by the Division of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) at WCM-Q, in collaboration with the College of Law at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU).

Course directors included Dr Thurayya Arayssi, professor of clinical medicine and vice dean for academic and curricular affairs at WCM-Q, and Dr Barry Solaiman, assistant professor of law at HBKU College of Law and adjunct assistant professor of medical ethics in clinical medicine at WCM-Q.

The other speakers include:

  • Dr Faisal Farooq, Director of AI, LinkedIn, California
  • Sara Gerke, Assistant Professor of Law, Penn State Dickinson Law, Carlisle
  • Jessica Roberts, Leonard H Childs Chair in Law, Director, Health Law & Policy Institute; Law Professor, University of Houston
  • David A Simon, Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School; Research Fellow, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy
  • Jamie Gray, Director of the Health Sciences Library, WCM-Q
  • Dr Alaa Abd-alrazaq, Research Associate, WCM-Q’s AI Center for Precision Health
  • Dr Arfan Ahmed, Research Associate, WCM-Q’s AI Center for Precision Health

The session was designed for physicians, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, allied health professionals, students, researchers, and educators.

Generative AI

Generative AI systems can be used for clinical decision support, medical record-keeping, medical translation, patient triage, mental health support, and remote patient monitoring, among others. It can also support drug discovery, clinical decision-making, clinical documentation, treatment plans, and advanced imaging.

Even though generative AI could benefit the healthcare sector, one of the key legal and ethical issues discussed during the session was that there are also associated risks for end users.

Some of the challenges of generative AI are that the system could change the way virtual assistants interact with their patients and that there is no legislative framework umbrella governing the space.

According to Dr Solaiman, generative AI raises questions about the guidelines that should be required during the development stage to avoid biases in data used to train these systems. He said that this is currently a very important topic of discussion because some hospitals are now considering using generative AI systems while others have already started developing them.

Even though generative AI will provide support to the healthcare sector, the applications pose legal and ethical challenges.

For instance when CHATGPT generates texts and information, who owns that information? Or if a clinician relies on the information from generative AI and something goes wrong, who will be held responsible?

In his presentation titled The Uses and Risks of Generative AI, Dr Farooq examined how generative AI systems are trained on texts, images, audio, and videos and how this could result in privacy, trust, safety, low interpretability, bias, misuse, and over-reliance risks.

Dr Roberts, meanwhile, presented Biased ChatBots & Health Disparity Populations, where she discussed biased data in healthcare and the risks involved. The presentation assessed legal protection for data biases in healthcare and their shortcomings.

The experts agreed that although generative AI applications could change the way medicine is practised, AI could never replace the role of a physician or a healthcare practitioner.

Dr Arayssi said the discussion provided a platform for healthcare professionals to learn more about the generative AI applications that are available to them and the unintended consequences of using these tools.

The event was accredited by the Department of Healthcare Professions (DHP) of the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME).

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