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Artificial Intelligence in Public Health

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Artificial Intelligence in Medicine

Abstract

The potential contribution of artificial intelligence to public health is made up, in a sense, of its many specific contributions to each of the medical disciplines, in that each individual contribution will help to improve the health of the population by making more efficient use of the resources of the healthcare system and improving individual health. There are, however, a few specific areas of public health and social medicine in which AI could bring about an evolution, or even a revolution. This may be the case for precision public health, which draws on data that is both more varied in nature, such as behavioral data from connected objects, and more precise in temporal and spatial resolution. Public health uses aggregate, often macroscopic, data to make health policy decisions. Such indicators are imperfect; they can be inconsistent or misleading and are often most useful in retrospect, rather than at the desired moment. Evidence-based policy would appear to be more legitimate and robust. AI could also change the way public health systems are organized at various levels. Learning healthcare systems, for example, are designed to adapt more or less autonomously to changing health needs. In any case, the challenges of effectively using AI will arise in public health as elsewhere, and they may even be exacerbated or intensified by the well-known and unresolved tension between individual preferences and collective preferences.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRIS Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux Sociaux, UMR8156 CNRS – U997 Inserm – EHESS, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, Paris, France

    Thomas Lefèvre & Sabine Guez

  2. Department of Forensic and Social Medicine, AP-HP, Jean Verdier Hospital, Bondy, France

    Thomas Lefèvre

Authors
  1. Thomas Lefèvre
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  2. Sabine Guez
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Correspondence to Thomas Lefèvre .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden

    Niklas Lidströmer

  2. Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Hutan Ashrafian

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Lefèvre, T., Guez, S. (2021). Artificial Intelligence in Public Health. In: Lidströmer, N., Ashrafian, H. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58080-3_54-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58080-3_54-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-58080-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-58080-3

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