Starting the year with AI Ethics at MeditSimple

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As AI continues to change the way we deliver healthcare services, ethical considerations remain at the forefront of our mission at MeditSimple. On the 22nd January 2025, MeditSimple convened its 2025 AI Ethics Advisory Board Meeting. Our meeting drew together individuals with backgrounds in AI, medicine, law, ethics and marketing, to discuss the launch of our newest technology development: SimpleAI

What is MeditSimple’s AI Ethics Advisory Board?

MeditSimple’s AI Ethics Advisory Board actively shapes our AI development, ensuring a balance between innovation and ethical considerations. Each year, the Board meets in January to discuss and reflect on the progress of the company and evaluate MeditSimple’s AI technology. We are committed to maintaining open dialogue and constructive criticism which is why our Board comprises of external experts who can provide insightful advice and comments about our technology and how we can make improvements in line with ethical principles. The board members have no financial interests in MeditSimple. 

In this year’s meeting, our discussions were particularly focused on user-centric design, feedback integration, liability, bias, and accessibility.

Just to re-cap: our previous 2024 meeting 

In 2024, members of our Advisory Board convened for our inaugural meeting. MeditSimple has actioned many of the recommendations that the Board put forward, including:

  • Disclaimer texts with summarised information have been added to the SimpleAI interface to provide more clear informed consent protocols
  • SimpleAI’s mechanisms have been adapted not to provide elements that could indicate a medical diagnosis
  • We have focused on including a human expert in the loop within patient pathways
  • The colour red has now exclusively been reserved for use on the emergency visit box to avoid evoking fear in patients
  • Decision not to cite AI sources because of risk of indirect diagnosis and unnecessary and unsupervised patient anxiety

In line with our commitment to transparency, you can find here a public copy of our 2024 AI Ethics Report which provides a summary of our Advisory Board meeting which has held on the 18th of January 2024. 

READ HERE

To now: our 2025 meeting

Who joined MeditSimple’s AI Ethics Advisory Board Meeting this year?

Our external members

Nadey Hakim: Professor of Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic London and Imperial College London

William Halfpenny: first-year resident at Chelsea and Westminster hospital, previously a postdoctoral research fellow at UC San Diego.

Neil Sardesai: President of Cambridge University AI in Medicine Society and MedTech Society

Frederic Josue: Founder of 18M Strategy Consulting and Lecturer at Science Po Pari

Emilie de Vaucresson: Partner at Joffe & Associés

Sharon Ho: 5th year Medical Student with MEng (Bioengineering & Information Engineering) at University of Cambridge

Harshvir Grewal: 5th Year Medical Student at the University of Cambridge

Our Internal Members

Laurence Levy: CEO and Founder at MeditSimple

Mathilde Konczynski: Medical Director at MeditSimple

Zoya Yasmine: AI Ethics and Legal at MeditSimple

Key Themes of the Meeting

1. User-Centric Design and Feedback Integration

Ensuring SimpleAI is designed with the end-user in mind is crucial for its safe and ethical use. The board discussed how continuous user feedback loops can enhance the usability and effectiveness of SimpleAI.

2. Liability in AI-Driven Healthcare

We discussed the boundaries for SimpleAI’s responsibility in the patient journey – considering if we have struck the correct balance to safely guide patients to the right human experts in our healthcare system. 

3. Bias and Fairness in AI

The Advisory Board reviewed ongoing efforts to eliminate bias in our AI models and ensure diverse and representative datasets.

4. Accessibility and Inclusive AI Solutions

AI-powered healthcare should be accessible to all, including for those from the LGBTQ+ community, patients with disabilities or individuals  who do not speak English. The board discussed strategies for making SimpleAI more fine tuned to the needs of diverse populations, including multilingual interfaces and taking into account varied presentations of symptoms for different patient groups.

Looking Ahead

As MeditSimple continues to innovate in AI-driven healthcare, ethical oversight remains vital to us. Our 2025 AI Ethics Advisory Board Meeting helps us strive towards responsible AI development and we are grateful to all our Board’s comments and recommendations. We are already working on these and look forward to updating everyone with our progress.

MeditSimple is committed to transparency and accountability, aiming to publish a public report detailing actions taken in response to the Board’s comments by our next meeting. This approach ensures that the AI Ethics Advisory Board actively influences decision-making within MeditSimple. Please check our blog for details of our 2025 AI Ethics Report and contact zoya@meditsimple.com if you have any questions.

Stay tuned for more updates on how MeditSimple is developing its technology, SimpleAI, while upholding ethical standards.