From Regulation to Innovation: The Impact of the EU AI Act on XR and AI in Healthcare

By Marcelo Corrales Compagnucci

Extended Reality (XR) technologies like Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR), are revolutionizing healthcare. These tools, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), are enhancing how medical professionals work across various specialties such as cardiology, pharmacy, and neuroscience, improving precision and efficiency in ways previously unimaginable. Tools like IBM Watson and DeepMind are already in use, with current applications in diagnosis, predictive analytics, and personalized treatment. Near-future advancements include AI in surgical robotics and real-time patient monitoring through wearables.

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Nudges or Shoves in the Secondary Use of Health Data: What is the More Desirable Approach? (Part 2)

By Marcelo Corrales Compagnucci, Janos Meszaros & Timo Minssen

This post is the second part in a two-part series about nudge theory, health data, and the U.K.’s National Data Opt-out System. You can read the first part here

Governments are always actively trying to improve their health care systems, and the secondary use of health data is one way of reaching this goal effectively. The secondary use of health data involves the use of health care data collected for a new purpose, such as research and policy planning. This data is usually collected from hospitals and health care systems – large databases containing administrative, medical, health care, and personal data from patients.

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Nudges or Shoves in the Secondary Use of Health Data: What is the More Desirable Approach? (Part I)

By Marcelo Corrales Compagnucci, Janos Meszaros & Timo Minssen

Empirical studies in behavioral economics have demonstrated how people are biased and often make poor decisions against their best interests. This has led policy makers to promote choice-preserving approaches, a.k.a. nudges. However, there has also been an increasingly vocal group of legal scholars who are interest in asking whether mandates and bans can be more effective than nudges. As pointed out by Cass R. Sunstein and others, the rationale behind this question is very simple: If we know that people make mistakes, why should we insist on adopting approaches that preserve freedom of choice?

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