Kaye attended the Responsible AI: Women in Healthcare Conference which was held at the Royal College of Obstetrics & Gynaecology in London last week. The meeting was chaired by Prof. Erika Denton, National Medical Director of Transformation at NHSE, and Dame Lesley Regan, Women’s Health Ambassador, and the agenda focussed on how AI could potentially help with some of the issues and challenges we see today around women’s healthcare.
The agenda focused on why we need responsible AI; combatting bias, getting the research right, healthcare transformation and making AI work for women to help diagnose and manage their health. Discussions included challenges and opportunities, navigating sex-specific and non-sex specific health and AI, closing the data gap and finally getting the strategy for implementing AI correctly which was presented by Dr Jennifer Dixon from The Health Foundation.
Baroness Merron, Health Minister with responsibility for Women’s Health, gave the ministerial address where she highlighted the potential of AI to revolutionise healthcare, but the minister also stressed the importance of addressing potential biases in AI systems.
Examples were cited where the algorithms used AI healthcare technologies to diagnose conditions like liver and kidney disease are less effective for women due to a lack of female patient data in their training models. This, she argued, perpetuates existing healthcare inequalities. The Minister stated the government’s support for initiatives like the Standing Together recommendations, which aim to develop standards for AI data sets that reflect the diversity of the patient population.
