Title
Promoting Responsible Use of AI in African Healthcare: Strengthening Patient Moral Agency
Abstract
Machine learning technologies deployed in several sub-Saharan African countries to assist medical practitioners have shown how such technologies can significantly extend the reach of limited medical personnel and equipment resources. However, while I praise the efficiency of these technologies in carrying out medical diagnosis and treatment recommendations, I raise some critical concerns about the normative shift that may occur in their usage in the sub-Sahel. I argue that Overreliance on these technologies may threaten shared decision-making between patients and doctors. While shared decision-making is an integral component of patient-centred care in contemporary medicine that must be respected, from a phenomenological perspective, the stakes are higher for sub-Saharan Africans. For Africans, the threat of shared decision-making may negatively impact two significant aspects of the community: I) What constitutes moral agency – interpersonal relationships. I contend that overreliance on machine learning technology for clinical diagnosis and recommendations may diminish the value of interpersonal relationships between patients and doctors. II) Overreliance on these technologies may also negatively impact alternative forms of treatments and therapies. From an African Indigenous knowledge thought, on the one hand, I show how vital these normative values are in the making of a person and their moral agency within the sub-Saharan African value systems; on the other hand, I contend that interpersonal relationships contribute to curative medicine and patient holistic wellness. Finally, this paper seeks to make novel contributions to the development of value-sensitive healthcare/healthcare technology policies, guidelines, and regulations within sub-Saharan Africa and countries in the global South that share similar ethical/cultural worldviews.
About Edmund
Edmund is a researcher at the Centre for Africa-China Studies at the University of Johannesburg. Edmund is also a research fellow at the Centre for the Philosophy of Epidemiology, Medicine and Public Health – a joint centre between the University of Johannesburg and Durham University. He leads the project on African-Centred Healthcare Technologies. Finally, Edmund is a recipient of the University of Notre Dame – IBM Ethics Lab 2024 Grant on the project “Technology Transfer and Cultures in Africa: Large Language Model in Focus.”