THE editorial committee of Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, has unanimously approved Professor Prem Misir’s book proposal titled Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare.
Routledge, according to its website, is a global publisher of academic books, journals and online resources in the humanities and social sciences.
Founded in 1836, we have published many of the greatest thinkers and scholars of the last hundred years, including Adorno, Einstein, Russell, Popper, Wittgenstein, Jung, Bohm, Hayek, McLuhan, Marcuse and Sartre.

Today, Routledge is the world’s leading academic publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
According to information from Professor Misir, without question, society today is being fundamentally transformed through AI, machine learning, and automation.
The book, among other things, intends to deliver illustrations of AI-driven health interventions on health inequality and inequity; how AI inputs health inequality and inequity, privilege, and vulnerability for individuals; addressing the status of ethics and governance for health in defining health inequality and inequity; illustrating the concerns and risks linked to the use of AI for health inequality and inequity; and using social perspectives to strengthen the existing AI ethical and governance framework for impacting health inequality and inequity.

“As per my contract with Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, this book is scheduled for completion in 2025,” Professor Misir said.
Providing background on his book proposal, he said: “Notwithstanding that social questions are now being attended to by developers of new algorithmic technologies, these AI designers still present an inadequate understanding of the social impact of their technologies (Joyce et al., 2021); and seem wedded to technological determinism (Vicsek, 2020). Apparently, increased AI activity also has been responsible for the demise of human agency (Anderson & Rainie, 2018).”

However, the World Health Organisation (WHO) advances the view that AI is enamored with huge possibilities to consolidate health care delivery and medicine, which could facilitate the birth of universal health coverage globally.
The WHO explained that AI could also aid low-and middle-income countries to alleviate their burden of substantial gaps in health care delivery. But the WHO also noted that these AI inputs in public health and medicine will not have a beneficial impact, unless ethical concerns and human rights center the design, growth, and deployment of AI technologies for health, according Professor Misir.

He added: “So ethical and governance concerns and human rights issues are social questions waiting to be addressed.
“As we come to grips with the substantial growth in interest and investment in AI in healthcare, it is useful to mull what Schwalbe and Wahl (2020) concluded: that a great deal of the AI-driven intervention research in global health is devoid of ethical, regulatory, or practical considerations, essential for common use or deployment.”
This situation, he said, has given rise to concerns about the need for an ethical and governance framework that addresses the values, institutional practices, and inequalities embedded in the AI system, even as some ethical guidelines for the employment of AI and data in health, albeit derisory, have appeared.

However, while there is some literature on ethics and governance guidelines with a robust emphasis on assessing the impact of AI on the individual (Smallman, 2022), that literature does not substantively consider the controlling, social and ethical shaping effects of AI on the social worlds.
The intent of this book, therefore, is to develop an ethical and governance framework on AI for health rooted in social and behavioral sciences conceptual frameworks and theories, Professor Misir said.

He added: “And so, with AI increasing its leverage in health care, it now becomes essential to develop a full knowledge of how AI impacts health inequality and health inequity vis-a-vis the process of delivering healthcare as well as the impacts from various health systems.”
Misir successfully completed the WHO modules on Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence for Health, 2023. And he presented a paper on AI in healthcare at a symposium on artificial intelligence at Trinity Washington University, on October 27, 2023.
He also has a Certificate on Improving Global Health: Focusing on Quality and Safety, Harvard University, 2020. His most recent book, COVID-19 and Health System Segregation in the US: Racial Health Disparities and Systemic Racism, was published by Springer— a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical publishing