Should AI be more like oil or O2?

Who should own the data used for healthcare applications? Is data really ‘the new oil,’ a resource controlled by the few? Or should data be considered a universal human right, like oxygen? After all, we own our kidneys until death, so why not our data? Is there a donor model we can adopt?

Usually, when representatives from business, government, and research come together, there are clashes of perspective. Not tonight – so that was nice…

Thanks to EdenFrost and via the Amsterdam Economic Board, I wrote a report from a World AI Week panel discussion in which the disparate participants all agreed: We need to develop well-thought-out protocols quickly; otherwise, entities like Amazon and China will soon run the show.

Read the full report: ‘Applying data science and AI to healthcare: Oil or Oxygen?’

Serving the patient

Jeroen Tas is the Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at Philips. His daughter has an advanced stage of type 1 diabetes, so his motivation is deeply personal. He’s passionate about providing healthcare professionals with the fullest context of a person’s disease.

“It’s like how self-driving cars function. You need many different angles and approaches to get a full picture of reality. Only then can it become effective,” Tas observes. “And this is especially true with cancer, since every case is different.”

And that involves getting everyone on board in sharing data. “I see it as a sort of data donorship – like with organs. And the technologies required are already available.”

Open, fair, inclusive

As founder and managing director of the research institute Waag Society, Marleen Stikker fiercely believes in the democratisation of technology and transparency in dealing with data and algorithms. Obviously, she doesn’t want the Amazons and Alibabas of the world to control healthcare data.

She believes we need time to think and really understand what we are doing. “What’s in it for the individual? How do we stay in control of all this stuff that we’re told is beautiful for us? Humans seem to have this fear: without tech we will fail.” (Cue her laptop freezing mid-presentation.)

Her solution is a Digital Commons that allows Amsterdammers – and potentially all world citizens – to determine the data they share, who they share it with, and for what purposes.

But who will pay for it?

The middle path

All eyes turn to Ger Baron, Amsterdam’s Chief Technical Officer, who believes the city can play a strong role setting up such a system. But Baron admits this process of developing regulations might slow things down.

“But in the long run, it will make it all easier. It’s still a mess everywhere – and we’d be first to have such a system before rolling it out across the EU. Just think, for example, about the potential lawsuits that might be avoided.”

Is the show now truly on the road?

Read the full report: ‘Applying data science and AI to healthcare: Oil or Oxygen?’