Project Title

Responsible Development of a Smart Physiotherapy Monitoring System Using Artificial Intelligence: An Embedded Ethics Case Study

About

This project was carried out as part of a Collaborative Health Research Project (CHRP) Special call: Artificial Intelligence, Health, and Society. Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). PI: Dr. J Shaw.

This 3-year embedded ethics and policy analysis occurred alongside and informed the development of a health AI technology undergoing commercialization through a start-up. The technology employed inertial sensors and supervised machine learning for the monitoring and classification of at-home patient physical therapy exercise frequency and technique.

Approach

The study began early in development and testing phases, and involved regular exchanges between the ethics team and development team over the course of three years. Data collection involved:

  • Semi-structured qualitative interviews

  • Co-design sessions with patients and physiotherapists

  • Document and policy review

Exchanges with the team included meetings as well as the development of responsible design deliverables including slide decks introducing our approach, summaries of initial themes arising from qualitative data, and preliminary design principles intended inform responsible implementation of the technology within a program of care.

Results

We suggest that a more expansive design and development lifecycle shaped by key ‘events’ offers a more robust normative approach to analysis of digital health technologies, especially where those technologies’ actual uses are underspecified or in flux.

We introduce five of these key events, outlining their implications for ethics, policy, and governance of AI for health, and present a set of critical questions intended for others doing applied ethics and policy work. We briefly conclude with a reflection on the value of this approach for engaging with health AI ecosystems more broadly.

Project Status

This project is complete.

Two publications are currently under review. For a copy of the manuscripts please contact me.