The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has released the country's first Ethical Guidelines for Application of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Research and Healthcare, aimed at creating "an ethics framework which can assist in the development, deployment, and adoption of AI-based solutions" in the fields specified. Through this, they hope to make "AI-assisted platforms available for the benefit of largest section of common people with safety and highest precision possible," while also addressing emerging ethical challenges when it comes to AI in biomedical research and healthcare delivery. The document, prepared by the Department of Health Research and ICMR Artificial Intelligence Cell, Delhi, will be updated as and when the need arises, said a senior Health Ministry official. Developed through extensive discussions with experts and ethicists, the guidelines include sections on ethical principles, guiding principles for stakeholders, an ethics review process, governance of AI use, and informed consent. "It [the document] is intended for all stakeholders involved in research on AI in biomedical research and healthcare, including creators, developers, researchers, clinicians, ethics committees, institutions, sponsors, and funding organizations,'' noted Dr. Rajiv Bahl, director-general, ICMR.

The increased availability of data and recent advancements in artificial intelligence present the unprecedented opportunities in healthcare and major challenges for the patients, developers, providers and regulators. The novel deep learning and transfer learning techniques are turning any data about the person into medical data transforming simple facial pictures and videos into powerful sources of data for predictive analytics. Presently, the patients do not have control over the access privileges to their medical records and remain unaware of the true value of the data they have. In this paper, we provide an overview of the next-generation artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies and present innovative solutions that may be used to accelerate the biomedical research and enable patients with new tools to control and profit from their personal data as well with the incentives to undergo constant health monitoring. We introduce new concepts to appraise and evaluate personal records, including the combination-, time- and relationship-value of the data.