Registration Link: [For HKU members] / [For non-HKU members]

MEHU Seminar

Title: “Artificial Doctoring and Quantified Selves: How Direct-to-Consumer Health Monitoring Devices May Compromise Relational Autonomy”

Date: 23 May, 2023 (Tuesday)
Time: 4:30 – 6:30 pm
Venue: Rm. 609, 6/F, William M W Mong Block, 21 Sassoon Road
Mode: In-person & Online via Zoom

Registration Link: For HKU members / For non-HKU members                                                                          

Abstract:
Respect for patient autonomy and data privacy are generally accepted as important bioethical values. Nonetheless, as industrialized countries embrace expanding forms of personal and health monitoring, questions abound about how artificial intelligence (AI) may change the way we define or understand what it means to live a free and healthy life. Who should have access to our health and recreational data and for what purpose? Would being continuously watched by connected devices render patients more isolated and their data more exposed than ever? Using a framework of relational autonomy that addresses both people’s capacity to exercise their agency and broader issues of power asymmetry, this presentation explores how the expanding availability of direct-to-consumer AI health monitoring devices and increasing datafication of people’s embodied experiences may ironically compromise people’s self-identity and autonomy in the digital era.

Speaker:
Dr Anita Ho
Clinical Associate Professor, University of British Columbia (UBC)
Associate Professor, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)

Dr Anita Ho (PhD, MPH) is a bioethicist and health services researcher with a unique combined academic training and experience in philosophy, clinical/organizational ethics, public health, and business. Born in Hong Kong, Dr Ho is currently Clinical Associate Professor at the Centre for Applied Ethics at University of British Columbia (UBC), Associate Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Bioethics Program, Scientist at the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences (Vancouver), and Senior Director of Ethics (Northern California) for Providence St. Joseph Health. An international scholar of more than 80 articles and book chapters, Dr Ho’s current research focuses on ethical dimensions of utilizing artificial intelligence in health care, research design ethics, supportive decision making, and end-of-life care decisions. She is particularly interested in systemic and social justice issues arising in health care.

For more information about Dr Ho’s work, including her new book, Live Like Nobody is Watching: Relational Autonomy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Health Monitoring (Oxford University Press), please visit https://anitahoethics.com/.

Discussants:
Dr Linus Huang
Research Assistant Professor, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Dr Levi Checketts
Associate Director, Centre of Applied Ethics, Hong Kong Baptist University

Welcome to join us!

Enquiry: Please contact Mr Edison Cheng (mehu@hku.hk).