The European Union’s recently adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act is the first comprehensive legal framework specifically on AI. This is particularly important for the healthcare domain, as other existing harmonisation legislation, such as the Medical Device Regulation, do not explicitly cover medical AI applications. Given the far-reaching impact of this regulation on the medical AI sector, this commentary provides an overview of the key elements of the AI Act, with easy-to-follow references to the relevant chapters.
The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine is associated with new ethical challenges and responsibilities. However, special considerations and concerns should be addressed when integrating AI applications into medical education, where healthcare, AI, and education ethics collide. This commentary explores the biomedical ethical responsibilities of medical institutions in incorporating AI applications into medical education by identifying potential concerns and limitations, with the goal of implementing applicable recommendations. The recommendations presented are intended to assist in developing institutional guidelines for the ethical use of AI for medical educators and students.
6 October 2023 in British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology
Aims: To explore international undergraduate pharmacy students' views on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into pharmacy education and practice.Methods: This cross‐sectional institutional review board‐approved multinational, multicentre study comprised an anonymous online survey of 14 multiple‐choice items to assess pharmacy students' preferences for AI events in the pharmacy curriculum, the current state of AI education, and students' AI knowledge and attitudes towards using AI in the pharmacy profession, supplemented by 8 demographic queries. Subgroup analyses were performed considering sex, study year, tech‐savviness, and prior AI knowledge and AI events in the curriculum using the Mann–Whitney U‐test. Variances were reported for responses in Likert scale format.Results: The survey gathered 387 pharmacy student opinions across 16 faculties and 12 countries. Students showed predominantly positive attitudes towards AI in medicine (58%, n = 225) and expressed a strong desire for more AI education (72%, n = 276). However, they reported limited general knowledge of AI (63%, n = 242) and felt inadequately prepared to use AI in their future careers (51%, n = 197). Male students showed more positive attitudes towards increasing efficiency through AI (P = .011), while tech‐savvy and advanced‐year students expressed heightened concerns about potential legal and ethical issues related to AI (P < .001/P = .025, respectively). Students who had AI courses as part of their studies reported better AI knowledge (P < .001) and felt more prepared to apply it professionally (P < .001).Conclusions: Our findings underline the generally positive attitude of international pharmacy students towards AI application in medicine and highlight the necessity for a greater emphasis on AI education within pharmacy curricula.
16 March 2023 in Journal of Medical Internet Research
Generative models, such as DALL-E 2 (OpenAI), could represent promising future tools for image generation, augmentation, and manipulation for artificial intelligence research in radiology, provided that these models have sufficient medical domain knowledge. Herein, we show that DALL-E 2 has learned relevant representations of x-ray images, with promising capabilities in terms of zero-shot text-to-image generation of new images, the continuation of an image beyond its original boundaries, and the removal of elements; however, its capabilities for the generation of images with pathological abnormalities (eg, tumors, fractures, and inflammation) or computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, or ultrasound images are still limited. The use of generative models for augmenting and generating radiological data thus seems feasible, even if the further fine-tuning and adaptation of these models to their respective domains are required first.