The major legal issue connected to IBM Watson Health is the storage, analyzation, and software of personal patient medical data (Greenberg, 2017). The actual Watson database is legal, since it is just a data system (Greenberg, 2017). IBMs A.I. software falls under the Civil Code of Quebec (CCQ, art.1457) that implies a physician using artificial intelligent technology may be liable for its diagnosis (Greenberg, 2017). Article 1457 is reinforcing the idea that doctors must not use Watson’s artificial intelligence as another “doctor” or a “master of medicine”. Doctors and administrator must remember that Watson’s purpose is to function as a source by which doctors can use to test their treatment ideas and see previous data about that treatment. It is an artificial intelligent system that provides feedback and suggestions that help doctors make decisions for their patients; it does NOT make decisions for the doctors.
Another liability noted under the CCQ (art. 1468,1469) that if a problem with the system, misdiagnosis, or misinformation by the system occurs, then the evidentiary burden will be placed on the manufacturer of the A.I. software, in this case IBM (Greenberg, 2017). Since the AI system learns from the information inputted by the doctor, the “guardian of the AI” is the physician, an could be responsible for the information outputted by the IBM Watson (Greenberg, 2017).
A news article by Frank Roylance from the Calgary Herald, “Will IBM’s ‘Watson’ become Dr. Watson?” summarizes an interview of Dr. Elliot Siegal, director of Maryland Imaging Research Technologies Lab at University of Maryland School of Medicine, regarding the major ethical problem of IBM Watson A.I. – will it replace doctors? (DRoylance, 2011). Many people have the misconception that IBM Watson wants to replace doctors and that their life is going to be in the hands of a computer doctor, “Dr. Watson”. IBM Watson cannot relate to a patient on a personal and emotional level that a human doctor can. Dr. Siegel clearly refutes this misconception, when he says, “In the future, I see the software sitting with the physician as he is interviewing the patient, and processing information in real time, and correlating that with the patient’s medical record and other records” (DRoylance, 2011). As previously stated, IBM Watson is supposed to function as a “support system” or “partner”. It primarily serves as an assistant that searches, organizes, and evaluates medical records and suggest diagnoses and treatment options. Dr. Siegal says, “I don’t see Watson ever replacing physicians” because IBM Watson is not a robot; it is a computer system (DRoylance, 2011). We are in a society that is introduced to new advanced technologies and robots, but it is the responsibility of the leaders of Medicine to not allow Watson’s A.I. to be introduced to robots. Human-human interaction, or at least human supervision, is essential during medical care, because the body is unpredictable, and a robot will not be able to understand a patient’s emotional response to a procedure and therefore may put the patient at risk.
In order to avoid the legal issues, protect the security of patient’s information, and follow the laws of medical ethics, current and future medical professionals must understand that IBM Watson, and similar AI systems, are to be used as an aid, and cannot and should never be used to replace doctors. In the article, The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Medical Innovation in the European Union and United State, published in the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Journal, in the U.S. A.I. medical devices fall under the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory jurisdiction (Tsang et al., 2017). The FDA has determined that IBM Watson is FDA and HIPAA compliant, and hospitals must constantly monitor the database to ensure that patient data is safe (Tsang et al., 2017).