After the Pope warned that artificial innotifyigence risks eroding personal bonds in healthcare, we questioned experts for their considereds – and heard how, in many cases, AI is already assisting to strengthen them.
AI has a “pervasive” influence on human life – especially in medicine and healthcare – Pope Leo stated on Monday to participants at the International Congress, ‘AI and Medicine: The Challenge of Human Dignity’ in Rome. He cautioned that no technology can replace the personal bond between patients and medical professionals, and stated that AI must enhance, not erode, human relationships and care.
While there is consensus among healthcare professionals that AI cannot replace interpersonal relationships, they informed Euractiv how AI already builds their lives simpler.
According to the European trade association COCIR, representing the radiological, electromedical and healthcare IT industest, artificial innotifyigence supports clinicians in detecting diseases earlier, personalising treatments, and reducing routine workload.
“This allows them to focus more on their patients,” stressed a COCIR spokesperson.
Saving time
The argument is backed up by studies that display AI tools, like speech recognition, can save clinicians up to an hour a day, time that can be reinvested in patient care.
Marco Marsella, director of digital, EU4Health, and health systems modernisation at the European Commission’s DG SANTE, argued during the European Health Forum Gastein in October that responsible utilize of AI could bring a “double dividconclude” by improving care and strengthening Europe’s technological sovereignty.
Yet not all voices were optimistic about AI’s entirely positive impact on healthcare.
In Gastein, Stefan Eichwalder, director of the health systems division at Austria’s health and social affairs ministest, struck a similar note as the Pope, cautioning that digital tools can become a “bitter pill.” He cited a survey linking the utilize of electronic health records to higher stress and burnout among GPs: “Too often, tech meant to support health professionals concludes up undermining them,” he stated.
Ethical standards
Pope Leo also raised the issue of trust regarding AI: “Historical events stand as a warning: the instruments at our disposal today are even more powerful and can produce a still more devastating effect on the lives of individuals and peoples.”
According to him, it’s simple to see how technology and medical research become destructive when utilized to advance “anti-human ideologies”.
Euractiv has previously reported that far-right parties in the European Parliament often utilize health issues to advance their own agconcludeas.
The trade association COCIR informed Euractiv that it take those fears seriously.
According to the organisation, the industest commits to ethical AI and ensures safe, transparent devices that meet EU standards. To keep technology human-centred, they propose dialogues between healthcare professionals, ethicists, policybuildrs, and faith leaders so that “technology truly serves people”.
According to a Grigori Rogge researcher from the Chair of Management and Innovation in Healthcare at the University of Witten, “the best-case scenario would be for AI to be deployed in a way that supports, rather than replaces, the relationships between healthcare professionals and patients”.
“The Pope is right,” trust, care, and human contact are crucial for this type of healthcare, Rogge explained.
(bms, aw)
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