Big data and AI for gender equality in health: bias is a big challenge

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly evolving fields that have the potential to transform women's health by improving diagnostic accuracy, personalizing treatment plans, and building predictive models of disease progression leading to preventive care. Three categories of wom...

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Main Author: Anagha Joshi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2024-10-01
Series:Frontiers in Big Data
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2024.1436019/full
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author Anagha Joshi
Anagha Joshi
Anagha Joshi
author_facet Anagha Joshi
Anagha Joshi
Anagha Joshi
author_sort Anagha Joshi
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description Artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly evolving fields that have the potential to transform women's health by improving diagnostic accuracy, personalizing treatment plans, and building predictive models of disease progression leading to preventive care. Three categories of women's health issues are discussed where machine learning can facilitate accessible, affordable, personalized, and evidence-based healthcare. In this perspective, firstly the promise of big data and machine learning applications in the context of women's health is elaborated. Despite these promises, machine learning applications are not widely adapted in clinical care due to many issues including ethical concerns, patient privacy, informed consent, algorithmic biases, data quality and availability, and education and training of health care professionals. In the medical field, discrimination against women has a long history. Machine learning implicitly carries biases in the data. Thus, despite the fact that machine learning has the potential to improve some aspects of women's health, it can also reinforce sex and gender biases. Advanced machine learning tools blindly integrated without properly understanding and correcting for socio-cultural sex and gender biased practices and policies is therefore unlikely to result in sex and gender equality in health.
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spelling doaj-art-2159675a466a4791ac12ea59bc31c9062025-08-20T01:47:37ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Big Data2624-909X2024-10-01710.3389/fdata.2024.14360191436019Big data and AI for gender equality in health: bias is a big challengeAnagha Joshi0Anagha Joshi1Anagha Joshi2Computational Biology Unit, Department of Clinical Science, University of Bergen, Bergen, NorwayDepartment of Biotechnology, Bhupat and Jyoti Mehta School of Biosciences, IIT Madras, Chennai, IndiaCenter for Integrative Biology and Systems Medicine, Wadhwani School of Data Science & Artificial Intelligence, IIT Madras, Chennai, IndiaArtificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly evolving fields that have the potential to transform women's health by improving diagnostic accuracy, personalizing treatment plans, and building predictive models of disease progression leading to preventive care. Three categories of women's health issues are discussed where machine learning can facilitate accessible, affordable, personalized, and evidence-based healthcare. In this perspective, firstly the promise of big data and machine learning applications in the context of women's health is elaborated. Despite these promises, machine learning applications are not widely adapted in clinical care due to many issues including ethical concerns, patient privacy, informed consent, algorithmic biases, data quality and availability, and education and training of health care professionals. In the medical field, discrimination against women has a long history. Machine learning implicitly carries biases in the data. Thus, despite the fact that machine learning has the potential to improve some aspects of women's health, it can also reinforce sex and gender biases. Advanced machine learning tools blindly integrated without properly understanding and correcting for socio-cultural sex and gender biased practices and policies is therefore unlikely to result in sex and gender equality in health.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2024.1436019/fullwomen's healthsex and gendermachine learningartificial intelligencebiomarkersbias
spellingShingle Anagha Joshi
Anagha Joshi
Anagha Joshi
Big data and AI for gender equality in health: bias is a big challenge
Frontiers in Big Data
women's health
sex and gender
machine learning
artificial intelligence
biomarkers
bias
title Big data and AI for gender equality in health: bias is a big challenge
title_full Big data and AI for gender equality in health: bias is a big challenge
title_fullStr Big data and AI for gender equality in health: bias is a big challenge
title_full_unstemmed Big data and AI for gender equality in health: bias is a big challenge
title_short Big data and AI for gender equality in health: bias is a big challenge
title_sort big data and ai for gender equality in health bias is a big challenge
topic women's health
sex and gender
machine learning
artificial intelligence
biomarkers
bias
url https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fdata.2024.1436019/full
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