“Better health-treatment with AI?” – Discussion with Björn Eskofier and Peter Dabrock
On Tuesday, November 15th, EmpkinS spokesperson Prof. Dr. Björn Eskofier and PI of sub-project E Prof. Dr. Dabrock discussed together with Dr. Katharina Seitz (UKER, university women’s clinic) about “Better health-treatment with AI?” at Kellerbühne, E-Werk. Organizer of this talk was “wissenschaft im dialog” with their series “Wissenschaft kontrovers”.
With Prof. Dr. Eskofier from the practical side as a machine learning scientist as well as Dr. Seitz as a doctor and Prof. Dr. Dabrock as an ethicist / theologist the discussion contained very interesting questions about the encounter of scientific breakthroughs and legal / ethical challenges for the implementation .
One great feature of the discussion was that individuals from the audience were allowed to take the empty chair next to the experts to ask questions and also give their own opinions on the matter.
Some of the topics throughout the evening were:
What is AI – is it better to talk about „learning systems“?
How can the everyday citizen be convinced of the use of AI in medicine – patients have to be educated in this matter and doctors need to get the knowledge on how to handle the data and tools correctly.
How can AI-data-use be revolutionized in legal matters – opt-out is not legal for example, only opt-in is. How can the benefits be more easily accessible?
How can moral obligation and solidarity be achieved best in this context?
One problem scientists and doctors have to deal with in this matter is, that patients usually want to give their data when it is ‚too late‘ – even though the data of healthy patients would be necessary for better analysis -> is it possible to generate a benefit for the healthy patients / people as well so that more individuals are willing to offer their data?
Are economic incentives really helpful? Prof. Dr. Dabrock for example suggests that, first of all, the bureaucratic problems were the bigger problem which make it less attractive to participate in, for example, matters like blood donation.
What do you think? Can and should AI help in medicine and if so how should it be done?