Doha- The issues of health care in conflict zones, and technological developments in the field of health care through artificial intelligence applications, received the greatest focus by participants in the World Innovation Summit for Health Care “WISH 2024”, which concluded its work today in Doha.
Summit participants called for the necessity of establishing a global coalition to protect health in conflict zones, in light of the increase in the frequency of attacks on health care providers in recent years. They also called for the necessity of developing legislation to codify the use of artificial intelligence applications in health care to preserve the privacy of patient data and information.
At the conclusion of the summit, in which more than 200 international experts participated, it was announced that Qatar had adopted the “Cardio for Cities” initiative, which is an initiative centered around adopting a data-based approach to enhancing the cardiovascular health of the population, so that Qatar becomes a regional center for expanding the scope of this initiative in Middle East region.
High frequency of attacks
Professor Abdel Badie Abu Samra, Head of the Quality Department and Director of the National Institute of Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolic Diseases at Hamad Medical Corporation, told Al Jazeera Net that the conference highlighted the disturbing increase in attacks targeting health facilities in a way that violates human rights and international humanitarian law, calling for the importance of taking specific measures to protect… Health in areas of armed conflict.
Abdel Badie added that international humanitarian law protects health care in conflict areas, and guarantees the safety of medical personnel, facilities and means of transportation to provide care without discrimination, but the past few years I witnessed An alarming increase in the frequency, scale and impact of attacks on health systems, including infrastructure and healthcare workers, in countries such as Sudan, Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and others.
He stressed the importance of UN agencies, governments and civil society cooperating with the health care community to adopt a stronger stance against attacks that target or directly affect health services, take firm steps to strengthen and respect international humanitarian law, and include health care protection within health and humanitarian programs. And the importance of establishing a global coalition to protect health care in conflicts.
He pointed out that, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, since 2018, the World Health Organization has documented more than 7,000 incidents of attacks on health care, in which more than 2,200 health workers and patients were killed, and more than 4,600 people were injured in 21 countries and territories suffering from Of complex humanitarian crises.
A revolution in health
In another context, Salim Salama, CEO of the World Innovation Summit in Healthcare (WISH), said in an interview with Al Jazeera Net that digital developments have brought about a real revolution in the field of health like many other sectors, but of course there are some ethical considerations that must be considered. And take it into account.
The same speaker believes that these digital developments have harmful effects, despite being beneficial, stressing the need to focus on knowing how they fit with cultural and religious communication, and how they can be adapted. Culturally with our countries and our regionWith Islamic principles.
He continued that developments in the field of artificial intelligence could revolutionize the field of medicine by improving the accuracy of diagnosis and the effectiveness of treatment, enhancing comprehensive health care, in addition to contributing to biomedical research and drug development. He added that with the rapid progress achieved by artificial intelligence, the ethical issues associated with it have become at the forefront of the attention of researchers and policy makers, and were among the most prominent issues discussed during the conference.
Medical liability
For his part, Dr. Muhammad Ghali, professor of Islam and bioethics at the Center for Islamic Legislation and Ethics at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, said in an interview with Al Jazeera Net that the most important pillars of health care ethics in general is the relationship between the doctor and the patient, and the more the doctor feels responsible and the patient has protection, as The weaker party, the relationship is based on upright morals.
Ghali added that the doctor has a responsibility as he controls the tools used in medical care, such as surgical tools and medical devices, but artificial intelligence has appeared to cause problems in this relationship, which makes the doctor’s control of this relationship not complete, because there are smart tools that learn, understand, decide, and place advice or decisions in Treatment method.
He pointed out that with these new technologies, the doctor is no longer in control of the relationship as he was before, because he has become dependent on tools that he cannot control, and we cannot make the machine responsible, because responsibility is a type of assignment and there is no assignee except the human. .
He explained that the official with the doctor in this case is the one who prepared, programmed and automated this smart machine, pointing out that this is a problem that must be solved by introducing new officials who were not present before, such as engineering, computer scientists, computer science, and others.
He stressed that the matter also needs new legislation to protect patient data and maintain health care ethics, such as the importance of licensing or approving new machines that operate with artificial intelligence within hospitals, because they differ from the previous ones and require a special license for specific bodies through specific ethical committees.
Disease prediction
For her part, Director of Genomic Applications at the Qatar Institute for Precision Medicine, Raja Baji, told Al Jazeera Net that artificial intelligence has great impacts on the development of health services, especially in the field of precision medicine, as these technologies contribute to predicting diseases, and then providing preventive measures or services to prevent The occurrence of these injuries.
The expert explained that smart mechanisms require obtaining comprehensive private information and data about humans.
She pointed out that among the advantages of this new technology are also the speed and accuracy of diagnosis by helping to read x-rays or medical reports and giving the results in a distinctive way, in addition to that it will relieve many of the administrative burdens on the doctor, especially in the issue of data entry, and thus save time for the doctor to talk more with the doctor. The patient, and build a stronger human relationship with him.
The same speaker added that the biggest challenge for these technologies lies in the issue of exposing privacy to risk, as well as preserving the data and information that artificial intelligence essentially needs to predict diseases, and with which applications are provided, explaining that this risk lies in the issue of being hacked and violating this privacy.