Unpacking Algorithmic Infrastructures: Mapping the Data Supply Chain in the Healthcare Industry in India

There has been an increased interest in health data in India over the recent years, where health data policies encourage sharing of data with different entities, at the same time, there has been a growing interest in deployment of Al in healthcare from startups, hospitals, as well as multinational technology companies.

Given the invisibility of algorithmic infrastructures that underlie the digital economy and the important decisions these technologies can make about patients health, its important to look at how these systems are developed, how data flows within them, how these systems are tested and verified and what ethical considerations inform their deployment.

The Unpacking Algorithmic Infrastructures project, supported by a grant from the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab, aims to study the Al data supply chain infrastructure in healthcare in India, and aims to critically analyse auditing frameworks that are utilised to develop and deploy AI systems in healthcare. It will map the prevalence of Al auditing practices within the sector to arrive at an understanding of frameworks that may be developed to check for ethical considerations – such as algorithmic bias and harm within healthcare systems, especially against marginalised and vulnerable populations.

Research Questions

1. To what extent organisations take ethical principles into account when developing AI , managing the training and testing dataset, and while deploying the AI in the healthcare sector.
2. What best practices for auditing can be put in place based on our critical understanding of AI data supply chains and auditing frameworks being employed in the healthcare sector.
3. What is a possible auditing framework that is best suited to organisations in the majority world.

Research Design and Methods

For this study, we will use a comprehensive mixed methods approach. We will survey professionals working towards designing, developing and deploying AI systems for healthcare in India, across technology and healthcare organizations. We will also undertake in-depth interviews with experts who are part of key stakeholder groups.

We hereby invite researchers, technologists, healthcare professionals, and others working at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare to speak to us and help us inform the study. You may contact Shweta Monhandas at shweta@cis-india.org

Research Team: Amrita Sengupta, Chetna V. M., Pallavi Bedi, Puthiya Purayil Sneha, Shweta Mohandas and Yatharth.