The Norwegian Directorate of Health has two ongoing projects, both of which explore the use of AI and have overlapping issues. The projects are aimed at children, young people and their family members, and both solutions will provide answers and information to users using AI. It could include large amounts of data with personal information from the users, and raises several relevant questions for exploration in the sandbox.
One of the projects is an attempt to quickly offer good professional answers to children about everything from mental to sexual health. They have developed a test version of the assistant HelseSvar (which translates to Answer about health), which is a chatbot built on ChatGPT and answers based on a base of selected subject texts. The project raises issues around anonymity and special considerations for the target group.
The second project is aimed at parents of seriously ill children, as well as service providers who are in contact with them. The aim is to reduce the time they spend searching for information about relevant services and offers. Today, families state that they spend an average of 19 hours a week searching for and coordinating services for their children. The project will develop an information assistant, which facilitates the collection and presentation of relevant information from a number of public sources. The assistant must be able to adapt the language according to the complexity of the question, so that, for example, doctors get more advanced answers than young people.
The sandbox project will consider how such assistants can ensure anonymity for users. And - if one cannot guarantee anonymity - how such tools can look after vulnerable groups, such as minors or sick patients. If the sandbox process allows for it, they will also look at how such tools can ensure the desired equal treatment.
The Directorate of Health's project manager Adélie Dorseuil is happy that the application struck a chord with the admissions committee, and that they have now been selected to be part of the sandbox.
- It is good to be able to have close dialogue and the opportunity to explore a new area together with the Norwegian Data Protection Authority. It gives us extra security that we can use innovative services in a good and ethically responsible way. There are not many examples, no particular material or practice from similar projects to rely on. We appreciate being able to explore issues together at an early stage and feel that the sandbox facilitates exploration and changes along the way.
What are you most excited about ahead of the process?
- It is the first time the Norwegian Directorate of Health is involved in the sandbox, so we are excited about what it entails and whether we will be able to reach any conclusions about the issues. We also believe that what we will explore is relevant for other actors, so it will be exciting to see how transferable this will be.
Dorseuil has also brought the Norwegian Directorate of Health's data protection officer Caroline Ringstad Schultz (left) and ETI project manager Jonas Rusten Wang into the sandbox project.