In 2022, GFBR awarded 6 fellowships to colleagues who had attended that year’s forum on the ‘Ethics of AI in global health research’. This post shares some of the fellows’ outputs on the Forum topic.
Mohd. Adli Bin Md. Ali, International Islamic University of Malaysia
In January 2024, and in collaboration with colleagues from the Southeast Asia (SEA) Bioethics Network, Adli hosted a workshop and public forum on ‘Advancing ethics oversight of AI-driven health research in Malaysia‘. You’ll find a report on the events here.
Findings from the workshop were presented at the 17th World Congress of Bioethics in June 2024 during a panel titled ‘Innovation ethics and oversight: insights from politically and culturally diverse governance systems‘.
Manjulika Vaz, St John’s Research Institute & Niyoshi Shah, Quicksand Design Studios, India
In Manjulika’s and Niyoshi’s own words:
‘Starting from September 2023, St John’s Research Institute; Quicksand Design Studio; and Anant Bhan hosted a series of stakeholder engagements to discuss the implementation of the Indian Council of Medical Research’s Guidelines on the ethical use of AI in health and health research (ICMR, 2023). These engagements included experts from bioethics, medicine, technology, law, research, design, and media to foster an interdisciplinary discourse.
The inaugural workshop in Bengaluru focussed on the practice of bioethics in India. The main objective was to align policy intent with action. The participants examined six projects on AI to understand the ethical trade-offs at play along with the impact on various stakeholders.
The main findings from this workshop were presented in Malaysia, at a conference by the SEA Bioethics Network. Following which we conducted a virtual session with speculative design to explore our preferred futures for bioethics. Who is responsible for responsible AI in our ideal world, and how do we bring that world into being?
The collaborations and dialogue generated through these engagements were invaluable; we have therefore documented our project in the form of a toolkit for anyone who is interested in doing similar work in their context. You can access the toolkit here: The Right Thing, The Realistic Way – Toolkit.
Rose Mwangi, Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College, Tanzania
Rose presented a talk during the University of Toronto’s Joint Center for Bioethics (JCB) seminar series 2023-2024 at the conclusion of her GFBR fellowship visit to JCB:
‘How prepared is Africa for ethical AI implementation? Bridging the gap for responsible progress‘.
Harriet Nankya, Makerere University, Uganda
Harriet visited Johns Hopkins University as part of her fellowship and presented this poster of her initial project findings at the Oxford Global Health and Bioethics International Conference 2024:
‘Considerations for community engagement for AI research in Africa: a review of literature‘.