Australia develops online tool to ensure safe use of AI in elderly care

A new online tool to help classify different types of artificial intelligence solutions used in Australian health and aged care has been announced by the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre, a research body linking academia, industry and government.

The Department of Health and Aged Care and two specialist AI teams within the University of Technology Sydney UTS Rapido and UTS Human Technology Institute are also involved in the initiative to develop and road test the localisation of an international framework to support the safe adoption of AI.

The project will deliver a self-serve advisory and benchmarking tool for AI developers, users, and policy makers tailored for the Australian health and aged care sector.

“We will be involving AI system developers whose systems have been developed in aged care in the development and testing of the classification framework to ensure it is valuable for use across the continuum of health and social care in Australia,” a DHCRC spokesperson told Australian Ageing Agenda.

The AI Classification Framework, which was developed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development AI Network of Experts and endorsed by 46 countries so far including Australia, provides an internationally recognised baseline for classifying AI systems and assessing the effectiveness of national AI strategies.

The framework aims to help policy makers, regulators, legislators and anyone procuring AI solutions assess the risks and opportunities of different AI sytyems.

The online tool will adapt the framework to the Australian context and the DHCRC project will adapt the tool for health and aged care organisations in Australia. The dynamic tool will identify specific risks associated with bias, explainability and robustness of AI within health and aged care.

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