Dr Skopek and Ms Anderson on "AI in Healthcare Through the Lens of Tort Law

Unfortunately, due to present public health concerns, this event has been postponed till September 2021.

On 21-23 July 2020, Dr Jeffrey Skopek (LML Deputy Director) and Ms Jennifer Anderson (LML Research Associate) will participate in "Future Health and New Technologies: Opportunities and Responsibilities".

The conference, organised by The Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX) at the University of Oxford, will bring together scholars interested in exploring the ethical, legal and social implications of technological innovation in biomedical research and healthcare across the world. Within an interactive conference programme, the future of healthcare delivery and the responsibilities of different actors within this context will be considered, addressing questions such as:

• What are the challenges for socially responsible research and innovation raised by new technologies and how might these be resolved?
• To what extent are current frameworks for accountability being challenged by institutional and organisational changes?
• What new roles are emerging for clinicians, researchers, companies and regulators?
• When are we considered ‘patients’, ‘consumers’ or ‘research participants’ in this new context?
• How do systems of governance affect the success or failure of new technologies?
• Will new technologies enable us to have a just and inclusive healthcare system, or will they lead to further inequalities?

Dr Skopek and Ms Anderson's will deliver the presentation "What Difference Does Is Make? AI in Healthcare Through the Lens of Tort Law. 

A rapidly expanding area of medico-legal literature has been spurred by developments in artificial intelligence (AI), with significant attention being devoted to two core questions: how civil liability should be assigned when the use of AI in patient care results in harm, and whether the changes in medical practice generated by AI require a change in the law of civil liability. Much of the literature on these questions implicitly proceeds from what might be termed a ‘premise of difference’. According to this premise, the adoption of AI-driven systems in patient care — especially those considered to be ‘black boxes’ – represents a new era in medical practice that will significantly alter the role of clinicians, their relationship with patients, and how the law should respond when the use of these systems results in harm.

The premise of difference has not, however, been sufficiently interrogated in the literature. By critically examining the ways in which, and extent to which, AI technology will foreseeably change patient care and its resulting impacts on stakeholder roles and relationships, Dr Skopek and Ms Anderson will dispel various misconceptions—about what is taking place in healthcare technology, what is realistically on the horizon, and what has come before. Their argument is informed by the regulatory environment (in relation to both health professions and medical devices) and the current state of the art.

Having grounded the enquiry in this manner, the second part of their presentation explores issues of civil liability when patients are harmed by decisions in which AI systems were somehow involved. Attention here centres on a category of actors that has received comparatively little attention in the literature: NHS trusts and other healthcare organisations. Examining the legal and normative case for holding these organisations directly (as opposed to vicariously) liable, there are good reasons to think that they will and should be regarded as potential tortfeasors in their own right for injuries related to the use of AI. As a final step,the ramifications of this conclusion in light of concerns about the burden of liability on public health systems will be considered. If their analysis is right, the temptation may be to limit organisational liability through various means – an approach that might secure short-term fiscal goals, but to the detriment of patients in the long run.

Further information about the HeLEX Centre 2020 Conference can be found here.