The increasing digitalization of healthcare must not lead to greater health disparities. Access for all citizens to digital care is therefore very important. The mission of the new ELSA Lab is “to understand the interactions and relationships between AI health applications that provide tools and approaches to ensure and improve health equity”.

This was followed by 9 short pitches from ongoing initiatives that discussed the opportunities and challenges for research within the framework of the ELSA LAB. An important opportunity is that more specific attention should be paid to ‘health equity’ in the development and applications of AI in healthcare. There is a real risk that such applications will increase health inequalities and put certain groups at a disadvantage. An important challenge is patient involvement and the accessibility and usability of datasets.

In the last part, the attendees worked in groups on new ideas for research and innovation projects and what and who are needed for them and to actually carry out that research or those projects. There was a lot of enthusiasm to collaborate on this theme. All in all, a good and inspiring start to the ELSA Lab.