Dear Seble,
Thank you for your interesting paper [ https://www.hifa.org/dgroups-rss/bmc-equitable-and-sustainable-community... ]. Citation, abstract and a comment from me below.
CITATION: An equitable and sustainable community of practice framework to address the use of artificial intelligence for global health workforce training
Seble Frehywot & Yianna Vovides
Human Resources for Health volume 21, Article number: 45 (2023) Cite this article
ABSTRACT
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and data science models may hold potential for enabling an understanding of global health inequities and support decision-making related toward possible interventions. However, AI inputs should not perpetuate the biases and structural issues within our global societies that have created various health inequities. We need AI to be able to ‘see’ the full context of what it is meant to learn. AI trained with biased data produces biased outputs and providing health workforce training with such outputs further contributes to the buildup of biases and structural inequities. The accelerating and intricately evolving technology and digitalization will influence the education and practice of health care workers. Before we invest in utilizing AI in health workforce training globally, it is important to make sure that multiple stakeholders from the global arena are included in the conversation to address the need for training in ‘AI and the role of AI in training’. This is a daunting task for any one entity and a multi-sectorial interactions and solutions are needed. We believe that partnerships among various national, regional, and global stakeholders involved directly or indirectly with health workforce training ranging to name a few, from public health & clinical science training institutions, computer science, learning design, data science, technology companies, social scientists, law, and AI ethicists, need to be developed in ways that enable the formation of an equitable and sustainable Communities of Practice (CoP) to address the use of AI for global health workforce training. This paper has laid out a framework for such CoP.
COMMENT (NPW): You note "It is important to make sure that multiple stakeholders from the global arena are included in the conversation to address the need for training in ‘AI and the role of AI in training’. This is a daunting task for any one entity". Indeed HIFA is attempting to address a related and similarly daunting challenge - universal access to reliable healthcare information - that requires 'partnerships among various national, regional, and global stakeholders' and we would be happy to share our experience. We have found, not surprisingly, that a small initiative with 1.5 staff has limited (but hopefully nevertheless worthwhile) impact on such a huge and complex global health challenge. Now that we are in offical relations with the World Health Organization, our aim going forward is that WHO explicitly commits to the goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information (already implicit in its Constitution), bringing the weight needed for high-level political and financial commitment to this neglected challenge.
Separately, I note that AI has huge potential to help address healthcare information needs worldwide and I look forward to witness how this develops in the coming years.
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
