AI and healthcare ethics in the Gulf Region: Islamic perspectives on medical accountability
The application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare has fundamentally revolutionized the medical landscape, impacting areas such as electronic medical records (EMR), imaging, laboratory diagnostics, treatment methodologies, drug discovery, the provision of preventative and precision medicine, and the extensive analysis of biological data. Despite the significant progress in integrating AI into healthcare practices, there are many challenges to the ethical management of these technologies. Even with its role in community health improvement, not all societies have equal access to this technology. Ethical dilemmas, issues related to privacy and data protection, obtaining informed consent, addressing social disparities, considerations of medical consultation, and the aspects of empathy and sympathy, pose various challenges in the integration of AI. Therefore, prior to incorporating AI into healthcare systems, practitioners and specialists should carefully weigh the application against the four principles of medical ethics: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice across all aspects of healthcare. There are also undeniably plural religious ethical standpoints to the ethical issues surrounding AI in healthcare. The main, overarching issue being that algorithms are not transparent, and the replacement of human decision making and accountability with machines and AI. Many of these algorithms are designed to save money, which doesn’t necessarily equate to saving lives. This report, in addition to emphasizing the ethical challenges associated with the use of AI in healthcare, will provide policy recommendations for the regulation of these processes to ensure that medical practice remains ethical and equitable.