NWO Funding for Sally Wyatt: collaborative project on Responsible Artificial Intelligence in Clinical Decision-making

[Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash]

Together with colleagues from the Utrecht University Medical Centre, Sally Wyatt has been awarded funding (total of €750,000) for a project about using artificial intelligence in clinical decision making.

The project is funded under the NWO Open Competition for Digitalisation, a scheme that explicitly called for multidisplinary collaboration.

The other applicants are Annelien Bredenoord, Karin Jongsma and Megan Milota – all trained in medical ethics and anthropology.

The overall aim of this proposal is twofold:

  1. to investigate the digital transition in image-based medicine (pathology and radiology);
  2. to ethically evaluate the role of AI in clinical decision-making.

The project will include ethnographic work in clinical settings to see how medical professionals and patients engage with AI. We will also trace the ways in which images have been used in clinical settings in earlier times and other specialisms. The project includes resources to develop an ethnographic film to inform patients and the public about these findings to stimulate debate and reflection. The outcomes of these investigations will form the basis for a theoretically profound and empirically informed framework for the responsible development and use of AI in image-based medicine.

The project will start in spring, and will include a postdoc position at FASoS (more details will follow).

[Photo by Robert Zunikoff on Unsplash]