The HEALTH-AI team has made substantial progress in advancing understanding of ethical AI integration in healthcare. Our team, including the PI, 2 PhD students,1 postdoctoral researcher and a student assistant, conducted extensive fieldwork across six countries—Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, China, the UAE, and Estonia—gathering invaluable qualitative data that help us answer our main research questions: how do human, professional caretakers make decisions together with AI; how does AI influence human decisionmaking; which factors underly this (governmental structures, AI regulatory difference, and/or other, more individual factors such as trust in technology or training in AI development), and with which potential impact for human healthcare in respective country case studies.
Despite the sensitivities surrounding the subject of ethical AI in the field of healthcare, and despite the fact that usually, gaining access to hospitals for ethnographic researchers is very hard due to the high-pressure environment of healthcare settings, we successfully conducted in-depth interviews with approximately 100 healthcare professionals and performed long periods (3-6 months per location) of observational studies in six hospitals around the world. This rich dataset provides unprecedented insight into the ethical, social, and practical dimensions of AI deployment in health contexts.
Since the start of this research the Principal Investigator (PI) has interviewed 30 stakeholders: developers of AI healthcare, hospital managers buying in the technology, etcetera.
She also authored 11 peer-reviewed articles in medical and anthropological journals of high quality. All articles are peer-reviewed, 10 out of 11 were solo-authored. She also has four additional articles and a book chapter forthcoming, later this year and in early 2026; and the team will start writing together in August 2025 for co-authored publications. The PI’s publications can be found in both medical, and in anthropology/social science journals. This dual publication strategy ensures that this project’s findings reach both the clinical community and academic theorists, bridging the gap between practical concerns and theoretical development.
Furthermore, the PI has given 28 key note talks to both academic and public audiences; has organized a seminar at the host institute with relevant scholars (professor Minna Ruckenstein from Finland, professor Klaus Hoeyer from Denmark); has organized a roundtable with 30 key stakeholders in the field of digitalizing healthcare at the host university in Amsterdam, and has offered 2 workshops for clinicians and nurses around the topic of Ethical AI.
The PI has managed and coordinated the team, providing extra-curricular PhD training, chairing weekly group meetings as well as facilitating individual meetings with all team members. She has also maintained trustful relations with the collaborating organizations (all hospitals).
