Page 11 - Shaping ethics, regulation and standardization in AI for health

Shaping ethics, regulation and standardization in AI for health

1 Introduction

The Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H) was established under ITU-T
SG16 and operated as a partnership of the ITU and the World Health Organization (WHO) to
develop a standardized assessment framework for the evaluation of AI-based methods for health,
diagnosis, triage or treatment decisions, illustrated in Figure 1. The group was established by
ITU-T Study Group 16 at its meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 9-20 July 2018 with the terms of
reference in https:// www .itu .int/ en/ ITU -T/ focusgroups/ ai4h/ Documents/ FG -AI4H -ToR .pdf, and
closed operations on 30 September 2023. Participation in the FG-AI4H was free and open to all.

Figure 1: FG-AI4H high level benchmarking workflow
The FG scope and general process were described in a Commentary in The Lancet [6] and a
white paper [4]. The documentation of all previous meetings can be found on the collaboration
site. An onboarding document was prepared to help newcomers participate in the FG-AI4H
work.

The group had seven cross-cutting working groups that developed high-level guidance and
best practices, which were then applied to 24 specific health use cases, called topic groups
(TGs). At the end of its term, 36 deliverables were produced that established a framework that
can be reused and scaled to other use cases. Management team meetings were held weekly,
to drive forward the different workstreams, which included online activities by the TGs as well
as all-hands meetings where all experts convened to present progress reports. There were
19 of these full-group meetings, which were usually accompanied by workshops. A detailed
account of the outcomes at each of these meetings can be found in the FG-AI4H website at
https:// itu .int/ go/ fgai4h.

In order to leverage the five-year built momentum, and in recognition of the importance of
digital health, the quick development of AI, the need for guidance to all stakeholders to increase
adoption of AI solutions and the pioneering work done by the ITU/WHO Focus Group on AI for
Health, the leadership of ITU, WHO and WIPO agreed to launch of a global initiative that would
enable, facilitate use and promote implementation of AI for health. The Global Initiative on AI

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