Equity, Ethics, and Empowering the Vulnerable

To ensure that the health benefits of digital technologies and AI can be equally shared across populations, existing biases in healthcare services and systems based on race, ethnicity, age, and gender, which are encoded in data used to train algorithms, must be addressed.

Well-designed digital technologies and AI for health should be ‘people-centered’ and inclusive. There is a critical need to ensure equitable access for all individuals, particularly for those who may be marginalized or vulnerable and face barriers related to gender, ethnicity, geographical location, socioeconomic status, native language, or internet connectivity. Even as advancements in technology may substantially improve healthcare delivery, they also pose significant risks to the exacerbation of health inequalities, weakening of data privacy, and environmental sustainability.

Safeguarding the rights of individuals and promoting planetary health will require careful consideration of innovative policies and practices that are necessary to ensure an enabling environment for the ethical development and deployment of healthcare technologies.

ST2 seeks to explore overarching issues relating to equity, gender, ethics and society that will need to be addressed to effectively harness the power of digital technologies and AI to advance universal health coverage and realize the right to health for everyone.

ST2 Sessions include:

PL2	Ethical Technology: For Whom, by Whom, and for What
PS2.1	Reducing the Digital Divide: Ensuring an Enabling Environment for Equitable Technologies for All
PS2.2	Harnessing Tech to Achieve Equitable Health Outcomes
PS2.3	Our Tech Future and Implications for Society: Promise or Peril
PS2.4	Data is Power!: Confronting Data Colonialism, Ownership Issues and Hidden Biases
PS2.5	Digital Health Technologies in the Age of AI: Decoding The Climate-Health Nexus