Ethics are not a technicality for health

It's easy for those of us who are enthusiastic about the potential benefits of new and emerging technologies to simply skirt past the ethical challenges they present. This is especially the case for my generation: we've grown up in an era of unparalleled technological advancement, making the world more interconnected than ever. We are now used to the idea of being able to access information and services instantly, but this has come at a cost.

Unfiltered Access

In recent years we have seen a series of concerns raised over the unfiltered and immediate nature of social media in particular: the way in which individuals' reputations can be destroyed overnight, children can gain access to explicit content, and vulnerable people can learn about methods for ending their own lives. There is therefore rightly concern at the way in which personal data is being used, and how complex algorithms are tailoring what we see based on input bias.

This is as much of a problem within healthcare as it is with social media: unfiltered data will inevitably reflect health inequalities which, if not contextualised, could lead to those inequalities becoming further entrenched. Unconscious bias is also a concern here, with algorithms potentially reflecting the bias of the individual who programmed them, or taking on the bias of the individual inputting data, regardless of their good intentions.
Access to data can also be problematic. Although the potential benefit of analysing large amounts of data cannot be underestimated, the ethical concerns, especially with genomic data as identified in the recent Topol Review, are complex. All of this demonstrates the need for appropriate regulation which balances the need to preserve patients' rights with the flexibility required to remain relevant in a rapidly evolving environment.

Development and Regulatory

Most big pharmaceutical companies will have departments which cover both development and regulatory affairs, especially in the UK/EU. This is because they recognise that, in a tightly regulated environment, products being developed must always comply with relevant regulations. Meanwhile regulators need to understand what flexibility is required in order not to stifle innovation.

Whilst not advocating the same level of regulation which currently covers pharmaceutical products, a similar system should apply to tech firms seeking to develop and implement tech in the health sector - covering everything from AI and complex algorithms to voice processors or remote monitoring. This should aim to allay the concerns of patients by properly protecting the use of their data, while providing sufficient flexibility to tech firms so they are able to continue rapidly innovating.

It is an area which the tech sector needs to take seriously, as does the life sciences sector more generally. It is also something the government should be prioritising, instead of waiting for things to go wrong before implementing regulaory reforms. Government should be proactive in this field, not reactive - and there is some htope that the recent proposals around NHSX may go some way to delivering this. After all there is a real opportunity here to lead the way, with a secretary of state who is already fully committed to expanding digital healthcare.

Opportunity Knocks

This, ultimately, is where the greatest opportunity lies: to ensure that we have an ethical approach to implementing the technological revolution in healthcare. In the UK we not only have one of the most highly regulated medical environments in the world: we also have a health service, the NHS, which effectively monopolises the market. While this can often create bureaucratic issues, this also presents us with a real opportunity to develop the right regulations for the tech sector.

There are challenges ahead. After all, the NHS is not the most efficient of machines, and it has a long way to go before becoming fully digitally literate. Yet the prize should not be underestimated: the UK environment provides a unique opportunity to gain access to an unparalleled amount of patient data - invaluable to medical research - and to do so in an ethical manner. The real question is: will industry and government see the benefits of working together to achieve this goal?