Advancing equity in artificial intelligence-enabled mobile health tools: A focus group study of Hispanic and Latinx community perspectives
Thursday, October 12, 2023
9:45 AM – 11:00 AM ET
Location: Galena (Fourth Floor)
Mobile health (mHealth) tools, including tools powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, have potential to advance equitable and accessible healthcare. Tools can support individuals in integrating their daily life activities with healthcare delivery and can help overcome healthcare access barriers such as cost and geography. However, if these tools are developed without incorporating the values and needs of marginalized and underrepresented communities, they risk exacerbating rather than alleviating health disparities by producing tools that are unusable, unresponsive, or inappropriate for the sociocultural context in which people live. Hispanic and Latinx communities in the US have often been excluded from the development process. To help address this gap, we developed a focus group study to explore the perspectives of individuals from rural and urban regions of Washington State who identify as Hispanic or Latinx. Focus groups, held via Zoom in English and Spanish, include multimedia presentation of exemplar cases depicting cough monitors and other mHealth tools being used in the context of pediatric asthma and other health conditions. Focus group questions address domains including clinical utility, usability, burden, machine learning, privacy, and data sharing, and they explore condition- and population-specific considerations for the use of mHealth tools across different clinical scenarios. In this presentation, we share key finding from our thematic analysis of focus group data and offer suggestions to application developers and research ethicists for how to incorporate the voices of Hispanic and Latinx communities in the rapidly developing field of mHealth.
Abril Beretta, BS – Treuman Katz Center for Pediatric Bioethics – Seattle Children’s Research Institute; Shaan Chopra, MS – Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering – University of Washington; James Fogarty, PhD – Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering – University of Washington; Russell Javan, BS – Health Systems and Population Health – University of Washington; Linda Ko, PhD – Health Systems and Population Health – University of Washington; Katherine López, BA – Health Systems and Population Health – University of Washington; Janet Rojina, MPH – Health Systems and Population Health – University of Washington; Margaret Rosenfeld, MD, MPH – Pediatrics – University of Washington School of Medicine; Benjamin Wilfond, MD – Pediatrics – University of Washington School of Medicine