Comprehensive Summary
As the usage of AI in telemedicine has been rapidly expanding since the COVID-19 pandemic, the article argues the importance of detecting, preventing, and mitigating the accompanying ethical risks. While telehealth includes a broader range of non-clinical services, telemedicine is a subset of telehealth that focuses more on clinical care. The paper discusses the synergy between AI and telemedicine, emphasizing potential benefits such as reduced clinical overload in public health facilities and collection of valuable health data on a large scale. Reviewing the limited literature in this field, the authors categorize the applications into three main categories: remote diagnosis, virtual consultations, and remote monitoring. Furthermore, they outline key ethical principles for AI, such as beneficence, autonomy, and justice, and develop a framework to evaluate real-world AI telemedicine tools like AiCure.
Outcomes and Implications
The application of AI in telemedicine presents significant medical implications that need to be addressed, particularly regarding patient care and equity. While AI has the potential to improve healthcare delivery by addressing clinical workload and expanding access to care, it simultaneously raises concerns about exacerbating existing health inequities. For instance, ML models may be trained on biased data sets, while minority communities are further excluded due to health literacy and accessibility barriers. Additionally, the article underlines the importance of considering patient autonomy with these technologies, particularly when tools like AiCure implement medication adherence, potentially compromising individualized and informed decision-making processes. Moreover, as personal health data is extensively collected with remote monitoring technologies, questions about confidentiality and control of data are raised. To ensure AI’s potential benefits are realized ethically, the article emphasizes the importance of refining ethical frameworks and conducting further research to protect patient rights and promote equitable healthcare.