AI Meets Ethics
Health Data Foundations and Equitable AI
April 17, 2023, 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Speaker: Dr. Charlene Ronquillo, Lead, Health Informatics Equity Lab; Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, UBC Okanagan
Title: Health Data Foundations and Equitable AI
Abstract: As health systems increasingly embrace and strive for fully digitalized healthcare systems, enthusiasm for technological progress coupled with uncritical approaches has sometimes meant that existing societal inequities are inadvertently embedded in health technologies. We have unfortunately witnessed harms that can result from algorithmic bias, such as the famous example of an AI algorithm that demonstrated racial bias when assigning risk scores. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has thrust into the spotlight the foundational structures that uphold and shape our health systems, including the limitations of legacy health information infrastructures in capturing complete and representative data for different populations. This seminar brings together discussions of health equity and data foundations with the aim of catalyzing conversations about wicked problems related to data quality in health systems and downstream implications for the development of equitable AI for health.
Bio: Dr. Ronquillo is a Filipina scholar, Registered Nurse, health informatician, and the Lead of the Health Informatics Equity Lab at the UBCO School of Nursing. The goal of her work is to improve equity in BC's healthcare with thoughtful and inclusive technologies. Dr. Ronquillo's ongoing research aims to ensure the meaningful inclusion of non-dominant groups in the conceptualization, design, development, and implementation of health technologies in health systems. Her expertise lies in mixed methods, participatory, and co-production approaches, software design/development methods, and the technology lifecycle: from conceptualization to evaluation and refinement.