Eduard Fosch-Villaronga & Hadassah Drukarch: AI for Healthcare Robotics

HUMA Book Launch

Authors: Eduard Fosch-Villaronga and Hadassah Drukarch

Introduction: Following in the footsteps of other industries, robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies are now also being deployed at an unprecedented rate in the healthcare domain due to their reduced cost and increasing capabilities such as carrying out medical interventions, supporting biomedical research and clinical practice, conducting therapy with children, or keeping the elderly company. However, while healthcare is a remarkably sensitive domain of application, and systems that exert direct control over the world can cause harm in a way that humans cannot necessarily correct or oversee, it is still unclear whether and how healthcare robots are currently regulated or should be regulated. Although the field of healthcare robotics and AI is very rich and extensive, it is still very much scattered and unclear in terms of definitions, medical and technical classifications, product characteristics, purpose, and intended use. Consequently, these devices often navigate between the medical device regulation or other non-medical norms.

This lecture presents our work towards mapping the major state-of-the-art developments in healthcare robotics and AI, their capabilities and applications, and the challenges we face as a result of their integration within the healthcare environment, thereby putting forward concrete recommendations to better regulate the field. 

See the book: AI for Healthcare Robotics (Taylor & Francis Limited, 2022).  

About the authors: 

Dr Fosch-Villaronga is an Assistant Professor at the eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University (NL), where he investigates legal and regulatory aspects of the robot and AI technologies, with a special focus on healthcare, diversity, governance, and transparency. He has been awarded funding for two H2020 FSTP projects focussing on the furtherance of science and data for policy in the robotics domain and served the European Comission in the Sub-Group on AI, connected products and other new challenges in product safety to the Consumer Safety Network. Moreover, in 2019, he was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship and published the book Robots, Healthcare, and the Law (Routledge).

Hadassah Drukarch is a researcher at the eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University (NL). She is the founder of The Law of Tech Podcast, which aims to provide insights into how new technologies are impacting upon the law and legal industry. She is currently also a student at the Advanced LLM in Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University. Her work navigates between law, digital technologies, governance, business and entrepreneurship, diversity and inclusion, and human rights. Moreover, she holds an LLB in International Business Law (2020) and an Honours College Law Program certificate (2020) from Leiden University.