The Social Representations and Legal Theory of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Big Data in Healthcare

This paper reports on a qualitative survey carried out among 17 experts sharing free associations on the introduction of AI, robotics and big data into the healthcare sector, featuring the benefits and risks but also contemporary applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics and big data in healthcare. The survey was implemented by a standardized questionnaire featuring open-ended questions, which the author emailed to potential respondents. The paper subsequently reports on the results of the survey in structured form using correspondence analysis by classifying respondents into four key stakeholder groups, namely (1) individuals in academia or education, (2) those dealing with health care issues form a business, economics and finance perspective, (3) medical and healthcare professionals and (4) public servants and legal professionals. Finally, the paper discusses economic, social and legal implications of the results. Survey results indicate that AI, robotics and big data in the healthcare sector may lead to more tailored medicine with precision, efficiency and excellence in assisting humans. However, big data involves risk such as commodification and misuse of data, as well as privacy and safety risk. AI may result in market disruptions that ultimately increase costs and bring about unpredictable risk. The paper also discusses currently ongoing legal trend in robotics, which result in robots increasingly being considered as quasi-human, big data analytics trends affecting taxation, regulatory attempts to overcome discrimination, and social stratification derived from big data insights