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ethical risks and governance of generative AI in health care applications

Source article: Generative artificial intelligence and ethical considerations in health care: a scoping review and ethics checklist

The widespread use of Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (known as ChatGPT) and other emerging technology that is powered by generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has drawn attention to the potential ethical issues they can cause, especially in high-stakes applications such as health care, but ethical discussions have not yet been translated into operationalisable solutions. Furthermore, ongoing ethical discussions often neglect other types of GenAI that have been used to synthesise data (eg, images) f…

By the Truvace desk2 min read5 sourcesPeer-reviewedTRV-2026-0360· cite & verify
Generative artificial intelligence and ethical considerations in health care: a scoping review and ethics checklist
Conditions pour IA digne de confiance conditions requirements for Trustworthy AI by Lamiot. CC BY 4.0 · https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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In brief

Published September 17, 2024, this scoping review in The Lancet Digital Health examined ethical discussions surrounding generative AI in health care, including ChatGPT and other models used to synthesise data such as images for research and practical purposes. The authors found that ethical concerns have been widely noted but not translated into operational solutions.

The work matters because high-stakes health-care use amplifies the impact of unresolved ethical issues, and the proposed checklist offers a concrete mechanism to improve evaluation and disclosure in research and product development. Uncertainty remains about how widely the checklist will be adopted and whether it will effectively cover neglected GenAI modalities beyond text.

Main points

  1. Scoping review analyzed ethical discussions on generative AI in health care to identify gaps in research.
  2. Authors note widespread use of ChatGPT has drawn attention to ethical issues in high-stakes health care applications.
  3. Existing ethical discussions often neglect non-text GenAI used to synthesise data such as images for research and practical purposes.
  4. Proposed checklist is intended for peer review integration and ethics-related disclosures for GenAI-powered health products.

The gain

Researchers developed a checklist for comprehensive assessment of ethical discussions in GenAI research that can be integrated into peer review to enhance research and support ethics disclosures for health-care applications.

The problem

Widespread use of ChatGPT and other generative AI has raised potential ethical issues in high-stakes health care applications, but ethical discussions have not yet been translated into operationalisable solutions.

The rundown

The authors conducted a scoping review of ethical discussions on generative AI in health care to comprehensively analyse gaps in the research, noting that attention has centered on ChatGPT while other synthesis uses have been overlooked.

To address identified gaps, they developed a checklist for comprehensive assessment and evaluation of ethical discussions, proposing its integration into peer review and publication systems and its use for ethics-related disclosures for GenAI-powered products and health-care applications.

What this doesn’t fix

Existing ethical discussions have focused on ChatGPT and similar text models while neglecting other types of GenAI used to synthesise data like images, which both resolve and expose different ethical issues.

Sources

  1. Peer-reviewedThe Lancet Digital Health2024-09-17
  2. Peer-reviewedSerials Review2025-10-02
  3. Peer-reviewedAI2025-06-06
  4. Peer-reviewedBig Data and Cognitive Computing2025-03-06
  5. Peer-reviewedInformation2025-04-17

The debate