Speaking at a session titled “Catalysing Global Investment for Equitable and Responsible AI in Health”, as part of the AI Impact Summit, the judge highlighted that integrating artificial intelligence into healthcare is essential due to the shortage of medical professionals in India and globally.
However, she stressed that this integration must follow a patient-centric approach and cautioned that deploying AI in health care without adequate human oversight would undermine its purpose and could significantly harm human life.
“AI can be implemented, it is required to be implemented because we do not have enough medical professionals either in the country or the world. We need to be able to go to the remotest areas, whether in Africa, whether in India, whether in South America, Southeast Asia, and I think AI is the answer to it. So I think what we need to do is in the area of AI and health, we need to have a patient-centric approach,” she said.
She added, “The patient is at the core of this, of this initiative, and with human oversight because without human oversight, AI in health will be a failure; it could lead to huge amounts of damage to human life. So we need to have human oversight.”
In her address, the judge also said that the World Health Organisation (WHO) is in the process of preparing a global guidance document on legal considerations relating to AI in healthcare, a project she has been co-chairing for the past year and a half.
She explained that the proposed document seeks to establish uniform foundational principles in the sphere of AI and health. It is envisaged as a guidance tool for countries and organisations to help identify and navigate the wide range of regulatory and legal issues arising at the intersection of artificial intelligence and healthcare.
The document, she explained, is structured in two broad parts, one dealing with general AI regulation and the other focusing specifically on AI in the health sector. It further sets out solutions across three key chapters addressing legal standards, regulatory oversight, and institutional capacity building.
The judge in her address also suggested the possibility of an India Health Stack, on the lines of the India Stack model, to enable innovation under regulatory oversight.
To be sure, India Stack is a set of interoperable digital public infrastructure layers built by India to enable paperless, cashless and presence-less service delivery. It includes Aadhaar for identity, UPI for payments, DigiLocker for documents and e-KYC tools, allowing governments and businesses to provide secure, scalable digital services to citizens.
“There’s one interesting thing that I wanted to show you today, and that is what is happening in India. The India stack model in which all of you have seen or heard about, which is the digital public infrastructure, DPI model, is already working and is creating lakhs and lakhs of innovations. So, do we in India, propose an India health stack? It can be one regulator looking at the India Health Stack, monitoring it and allowing enormous amounts of innovation on that health stack by allowing some data to be easily accessible,” she said.
Curated by Shiv Shakti Mishra
